CHAPTER XXV.
TRIALS.
The general recovered; as slowly, indeed, as Emily had, but it is gratifying to add, as surely.

And now that loving couple might be seen, weakly creeping out together, when the day was finest: tottering white December leaning on a sickly fragile May.

There were no concealments now between them, no reservings, and heart-stricken Emily heard from her repentant father's lips the story of her birth: she was, he said, his own daughter by a native princess, the Begum Dowlia Burruckjutli.
A bitter--bitter truth was that: the destruction of all her hopes, pleasures, and affections.

It had now become to her a sin to love that dearest one of all things lovely on this earth: duty, paramount and stern, commanded her, without a shadow of reprieve, to execute on herself immediately the terrible sentence of banishing her own betrothed: nay, more, she must forget him, erase his precious image from her heart, and never, never see that brother more.

And Charles must feel the same, and do the like; oh! sorrow, passing words! and their two commingled souls must be violently wrenched apart; for such love in them were crime.
Dear children of affection--it is a dreadful lesson this for both of you; but most wise, most needful--or the hand that guideth all things, never would have sent it.