“Alas, Ariel, little do you know, sweet bird, what anxiety you have caused your mistress—­if he dies I shall never love you more?  Yes, coo, and flutter—­but I do not care for you; no, that kiss won’t satisfy me until he is recovered—­then I shall be friends with you, and you shall be my own Ariel again.”

She would then pat it petulantly; and the beautiful creature would sink its head, and slightly expand its wings, as if conscious that there was a change of mood in her affection.

But again the innocent remorse of her girlish heart would flow forth in terms of tenderness and endearment; again would I she pat and cherish it; and with the artless I caprice of childhood exclaim—­

“No, my own Ariel, the fault was not yours; come, I shall love you—­and I will not be angry again; even if you were not good I would love you for his sake.  You are now dearer to me a thousand times than you ever were; but alas!  Ariel, I am sick, I am sick, and no longer happy.  Where is my lightness of heart, my sweet bird, and where, oh where is the joy I used to feel?”

Even this admission, which in the midst of solitude could reach no other human ear, would startle the bashful creature into alarm; and whilst her cheek became alternately pale and crimson at such an avowal thus uttered aloud, she would wipe away the tears that arose to her eyes whenever the depths of her affection were stirred by those pensive broodings which gave its sweetest charm to youthful love.

In thus seeking solitude, it is not to be imagined that our young heroine was drawn thither by a love of contemplating nature in those fresher aspects which present themselves in the stillness of her remote recesses.  She sought not for their own sakes the shades of the grove, the murmuring cascade, nor the voice of the hidden rivulet that occasionally stole out from its leafy cover, and ran in music towards the ampler stream of the valley.

No, no; over her heart and eye the spirit of their beauty passed idly and unfelt.  All of external life that she had been wont to love and admire gave her pleasure no more.  The natural arbors of woodbine, the fairy dells, and the wild flowers that peeped in unknown sweetness about the hedges, the fairy fingers, the blue-bells, the cow-slips, with many others of her fragrant and graceful favorites, all, all, charmed her, alas, no more.  Nor at home, where every voice was tenderness, and every word affection, did there exist in her stricken heart that buoyant sense of enjoyment which had made her youth like the music of a brook, where every thing that broke the smoothness of its current only turned it into melody.  The morning and evening prayer—­the hymn of her sister voices—­their simple spirit of tranquil devotion—­and the touching solemnity of her father, worshipping God upon the altar of his own heart—­all, all this, alas—­alas, charmed her no more.  Oh, no—­no; many motives conspired to send her into solitude, that she