salinda quickly beyond this world's cares.— The conviction he felt of her purity of mind, notwithstanding her aberration from those rules of conduct which no woman can overpass or contemn without paying the price of lost happiness for their error, made him at length determine to take his wife to see her, and he could give no greater proof of the deep impression of interest with which she had inspired him.

The lonely and unhappy Italian seemed to revive under the consciousness of not being deemed unworthy of the attention of the good and pure of her own sex; for even those who have lost all title to such society, feel the bitterness of the pang which makes them tacitly acknowledge the justice of that sentence which deprives them of such association.

As Rosalinda's strength daily decreased, and she became aware herself that she could not long survive the rapid progress of her malady, she said one day to Mrs. Altamont,-" Before I die I must see Lord Mowbray once again." It was a sudden burst of feeling which

made her utter these words, and having broken the seal which hitherto closed her lips in silence, she found a solace in frequently addressing her indulgent auditress on this theme, the engrossing object of her whole unhappy existence. At various intervals, stimulated by sudden impulses of feeling, Rosalinda laid open by degrees her whole life to Mrs. Altamont;-had these detached fragments been embodied in a continued narrative they would have told the following story:-After having confessed that sudden attachment to Lord Mowbray, the particulars of which have already been detailed, she declared that from the time she had become convinced he did not love her,—for " I call not by that name," she said, "the gentle and kindly sentiment with which he requited my devotion to him,—I formed but one plan, I looked forward but to one goal -it is that which I am now about to see realized, an early death! But I resolved that during the time I sojourned upon earth I would always follow him wherever he went, breathe the same air, tread the same soil, and occasionally gaze upon those features which had been so

fatal to me. For this sole purpose I followed him to England-for none other. I had no hope of being united to him. I would not have become his wife, convinced as I was, that compassion alone, and not love, would have obtained for me that boon. I had not been long in England, however, when I found my pecuniary resources were at an end. The distant relations to whom, by the terms on which I held them, my estates became forfeit so soon as I should live beyond a stipulated time out of Italy, took speedy advantage of the circumstance; stopped my rents, laid claim to my palaces and domains, and I found myself in a strange land, without even a single friend, on the eve of utter destitution. What could I do? to whom could I apply? to Lord Mowbray? ah! no,-sooner die than make known my situation to him; that he should guess I had followed him, I would bear; but that he should think I was persecuting him by my presence, sueing to him for subsistence,-no, Rosalinda was not made for that.

"I thought then, for the first time, of the

value of the talent with which nature and my native soil had endowed me, and offered myself as Prima Donna for the Opera House. My skill was approved, my voice commended; and I entered upon my new career with a feeling of proud independence, that those only can know, who, born to luxury and splendour, find themselves unexpectedly called upon to derive from their own exertions and self-resources those comforts and accessories to mere existence which, perhaps, are never known to be luxuries, or are never duly tasted as such, till we have felt what it is to lose them, or to purchase them by our own personal exertions. So long as my health was unimpaired, I fainted not under my lot, but gloried in it. I received a large salary. It sufficed me amply in the way in which I lived, and the situation I had chosen to fill was less painful to me than I had anticipated; for, knowing no one, and being unknown, I thought only of gaining the approbation of the public in my capacity of singer, and was totally reckless of the various conjectures formed in respect to me. Often

when on the stage, the thought of one being alone inspired me; and I was so totally abstracted, though in presence of an immense multitude, that his image only appeared to fill the theatre; for him I sang, for him I felt, for him I poured forth my whole soul, and the people wondered-and while I was acting Medea, some of them said, She is, or must have been, truly mad,' and they were right—if love be madness. But I knew I had only felt what I expressed, and that I had not acted well, but suffered intensely-not thought of obtaining applause, but of giving utterance to the sentiments which were consuming me.

"When the Opera closed for the season, I learnt where Lord Mowbray resided, and to that neighbourhood I followed. I lived obscurely; no one thought of inquiring who I was, and all I wished was from time to time to see him as he passed my cottage window, or gave orders to his work people. In the anguish of this joy, I lived—I never attempted any employment-I never opened a book. What was all I had once taken delight in now to me? Mu