“Whom men love not, but yet regret.”

And so it proved.  Just as in her childish days, though in a different form, it happened betwixt her and these companions.  She could not be content to receive them quietly, but was stimulated to throw herself too much into the tie, into the hour, till she filled it too full for them.  Like Fortunio, who sought to do homage to his friends by building a fire of cinnamon, not knowing that its perfume would be too strong for their endurance, so did Mariana.  What she wanted to tell, they did not wish to hear; a little had pleased, so much overpowered, and they preferred the free air of the street, even, to the cinnamon perfume of her palace.

However, this did not signify; had they staid, it would not have availed her!  It was a nobler road, a higher aim she needed now; this did not become clear to her.

She lost her appetite, she fell sick, had fever.  Sylvain was alarmed, nursed her tenderly; she grew better.  Then his care ceased, he saw not the mind’s disease, but left her to rise into health and recover the tone of her spirits, as she might.  More solitary than ever, she tried to raise herself, but she knew not yet enough.  The weight laid upon her young life was a little too heavy for it.  One long day she passed alone, and the thoughts and presages came too thick for her strength.  She knew not what to do with them, relapsed into fever, and died.

Notwithstanding this weakness, I must ever think of her as a fine sample of womanhood, born to shed light and life on some palace home.  Had she known more of God and the universe, she would not have given way where so many have conquered.  But peace be with her; she now, perhaps, has entered into a larger freedom, which is knowledge.  With her died a great interest in life to me.  Since her I have never seen a Bandit’s Bride.  She, indeed, turned out to be only a merchant’s.—­Sylvain is married again to a fair and laughing girl, who will not die, probably, till their marriage grows a “golden marriage.”

Aunt Z. had with her some papers of Mariana’s, which faintly shadow forth the thoughts that engaged her in the last days.  One of these seems to have been written when some faint gleam had been thrown across the path, only to make its darkness more visible.  It seems to have been suggested by remembrance of the beautiful ballad, Helen of Kirconnel Lee, which once she loved to recite, and in tones that would not have sent a chill to the heart from which it came.

                                          “Death
    Opens her sweet white arms, and whispers Peace;
    Come, say thy sorrows in this bosom!  This
    Will never close against thee, and my heart,
    Though cold, cannot be colder much than man’s.”

“I wish I were where Helen lies,”
A lover in the times of old,
Thus vents his grief in lonely sighs,
And hot tears from a bosom cold.

        But, mourner for thy martyred love,
      Could’st thou but know what hearts must feel,
        Where no sweet recollections move,
      Whose tears a desert fount reveal.