BY THE AUTHOR OF

“The household of BOUVERIE.”

    “Fancy, with fact, is just one fact the more.”

    “Let this old woe step on the stage again,
    Act itself o’er anew for men to judge;
    Not by the very sense and sight indeed,
    Which take at best imperfect cognizance. 
    Since, how heart moves brain, and how both move hand,
    What mortal ever in entirety saw? 
    Yet helping us to all we seem to hear,
    For, how else know we save by worth of word?”

Browning, “The Ring and the Book”

New York: 
D. Appleton and company,
549 & 551 Broadway.
1873.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the memory of one most dear, who saw it grow to completion with pleasure and approbation, during the last happy summer of a life since darkened by misfortune.  Peace be his!

MONFORT HALL.

    “Not one friend have we here, not one true heart;
    We’ve nothing but ourselves.”

    “There’s a dark spirit walking in our house,
    And swiftly will the destiny close on us. 
    It drove me hither from my calm asylum;
    It lures me forward—­in a seraph’s shape
    I see it near, I see it nearer floating—­
    It draws, it pulls me with a godlike power,
    And, lo, the abyss! and thither am I moving;
    I have no power within me—­but to move.”

    “He is the only one we have to fear, he and his father.”

COLERIDGE’S Translation of Schiller’s “Wallenstein"

MIRIAM MONFORT

* * * * *

PART I.

MONFORT HALL.

CHAPTER I.

My father, Reginald Monfort, was an English gentleman of good family, who, on his marriage with a Jewish lady of wealth and refinement, emigrated to America, rather than subject her and himself to the commentaries of his own fastidious relatives, and the incivilities of a clique to which by allegiance of birth and breeding he unfortunately belonged.

Her own family had not been less averse to this union than the aristocratic house of Monfort, and, had she not been the mistress of her own acts and fortune, would, no doubt, have absolutely prevented it.  As it was, a wild wail went up from the synagogue at the loss of one of its brightest ornaments, and the name of “Miriam Harz” was consigned to silence forever.

Orphaned and independent, this obloquy and oblivion made little difference to its object, especially when the broad Atlantic was placed, as it soon was, between her and her people, and new ties and duties arose in a strange land to bind and interest her feelings.