"If the spot on which we stand were a desert island, and the valley stretching around us the wide waste of ocean, and we the only beings in the solitude of nature, with your hand thus clasped in mine, and my heart thus throbbing near, with a love so strong, so deep, it would be to you in place of the whole world beside,--tell me, could you be happy ?" "I could," was the low, irresistible answer; and my soul, like an illuminated temple, flashed with inward light.

I covered my eyes to keep in the dazzling rays.

I forgot the sad history of wrongs and disgrace which I had just been perusing;--I forgot that such words had breathed into my mother's ear, and that she believed them.

I only remembered that Ernest Linwood loved me, and _that_ love surrounded me with a luminous atmosphere, in which joy and hope fluttered their heavenly wings.
How slight a thing will change the current of thought! I caught a glimpse of the granite walls of Grandison Place, and darkened by the shades, they seemed to frown upon me with their high turret and lofty colonnade, so ancestral and imposing.

Then I remembered Mrs.Linwood and Edith,--then I remembered my mother, my _father_, and all the light went out in my heart.
"I had forgotten,--oh, how much I had forgotten," I cried, endeavoring to release myself from the arm that only tightened its hold.