“She is evidently unhappy,” thought he, as he contemplated her; “and that face, lovely as it is, has become the exponent of misery and distress.  Goodness me! how wan she is! how pale! and how distinctly do those beautiful blue veins run through her white and death-like temples!  Perhaps, after all, I am wrong in urging on this marriage.  But what can I do?  I have no fixed principle from any source sufficiently authentic to guide me; no creed which I can believe.  This life is everything to us; for what do we know, what can we know, of another?  And yet, could it be that for my indifference to what is termed revealed truth, God Almighty is now making me the instrument of my own punishment?  But how can I receive this doctrine? for here, before my eyes, is not the innocent suffering as much, if not more, than the guilty, even granting that I am so?  And if I am perversely incredulous, is not here my son restored to me, as if to reward my unbelief?  It is a mysterious maze, and I shall never get out of it; a curse to know that the most we can ever know is, that we know—­nothing.  Yet I will go on with this marriage.  Pale as that brow is, I must see it encircled by the coronet of a countess; I must see her, as she ought to be, high in rank as she is in truth, in virtue, in true dignity.  I shall force the world to make obeisance to her; and I shall teach her afterwards to despise it.  She once said to me, ’And is it to gain the applause of a world you hate and despise, that you wish to exalt me to such a bawble?’—­meaning the coronet.  I replied, ‘Yes, and for that very reason.’  I shall not now disturb her.”

He was about to leave the room, when he! noticed that her bosom began suddenly and rapidly to heave, as if by some strong and fearful agitation; and a series of close, pain-fed sobbings proceeded from her half-closed lips.  This tumult went on for a little, when at length it was terminated by one long, wild scream, that might be supposed to proceed from the very agony of despair itself; and opening her eyes, she started up, her! face, if possible, paler than before, and her eyes filled as if with the terror of some horrible vision.

“No,” she said, “the sacrifice is complete—­I am your wife; but there is henceforth an eternal gulf between us, across which you shall never drag me.”

On gazing about her with wild and disturbed looks, she paused for moment, and, seeing her father, she rose up, and with a countenance changed from its wildness to one in which was depicted an expression so woe-begone, so deplorable, so full of sorrow, that it was scarcely in human nature, hardened into the induration of the world’s worst spirit, not to feel its irresistible influence.  She then threw her arms imploringly and tenderly about his neck, and looking into his eyes as if she were supplicating for immortal salvation at his hands, she said, “Oh, papa, have compassion on me.”

“What’s the matter, Lucy? what’s the matter, my love?”