“Oh!  Florry, dear Florry! turn to God for comfort and succor in this hour of need.  He will enable you to bear this trial, and go steadily on in the path of duty.”

“Mary, I have no incitement to exertion; nothing to anticipate.  My future is blank and dreary.  I know my lot in life; I have nothing to hope for.”

“Not so, Florry.  Your future life will be an active one.  Are we not dependent on our exertions for subsistence? and does not our little school open to-morrow?  Cheer up, darling all may yet be bright.  Bury the painful remembrances of the past; believe me, peace, if not joyousness, will surely follow the discharge of your duties.”

“I cannot forget the past.  Had he sought my love, I could scorn him for his baseness; but it is not so, I almost wish it were.  Yet I know and feel that he loves me; and oblivion of the past is as impossible for him as, myself.  I know not what strange impulse has induced me to tell you all this.  I did it half unconsciously, hoping for relief by revealing that which has pressed so heavily on my heart.  Mary, never speak to me of it again; and, above all, do not mention his name.  It has passed my lips for the last time, and all shall be locked again within my own heart.  We will open the school to-morrow; and may God help me, Mary, pray, oh, pray for me!  I had no mother to teach me, and prayer is a stranger to my lips.”

She walked hurriedly to the house, and shut herself within her own apartment.

CHAPTER XIII.

  “Freedom calls you!  Quick! be ready: 
     Think of what your sires have been: 
   Onward! onward! strong and steady,
     Drive the tyrant to his den.”

  Percival.

How intoxicating is the love of power; and how madly the votaries of ambition whirl to the vortex of that moral Corbrechtan, which has ingulfed so many hapless victims.  Our own noble Washington stands forth a bright beacon to warn every ruler, civil or military, of the thundering whirlpool.  Father of your country! you stand alone on the pedestal of greatness; and slowly rolling years shall pour their waters into the boundless deep of eternity ere another shall be placed beside you.

When Iturbide attempted to free his oppressed countrymen from the crushing yoke of Spanish thraldom, Liberty was the watchword.  Success crowned his efforts—­sovereign power lay before him.  He grasped it, and made himself a despot.  Ambition hurled him from the throne of the Montezumas, and laid his proud head low.  A new star rose on the stormy horizon of the west; pure and softly fell the rays on the troubled thousands round.  The voice of the new-comer said “Peace,” and the wild tumult subsided.  Ten years passed; Santa Anna culminated.  The gentle tones of the arch-deceiver were metamorphosed into the tiger’s growl, the constitution of 1824 subverted in a day, and he ruled in the room of the lost Iturbide.