The reader has not forgotten the young woman to whose relief, from fire, Ralph Colleton so opportunely came while making his escape from his pursuers.  We remember the resignation—­the yielding weakness of her broken spirit to the will of her destroyer.  We have seen her left desolate by the death of her only relative, and only not utterly discarded by him, to whose fatal influence over her heart, at an earlier period, we may ascribe all her desolation.  She then yielded without a struggle to his will, and, having prepared her a new abiding-place, he had not seen her after, until, unannounced and utterly unlooked-for, certainly uninvited, she appeared before him in the cell of his dungeon.

Certainly, none are utterly forgotten!  There are some who remember—­some who feel with the sufferer, however lowly in his suffering—­some who can not forget.  No one perishes without a tearful memory becoming active when informed of his fate; and, though the world scorns and despises, some one heart keeps a warm sympathy, that gives a sigh over the ruin of a soul, and perhaps plants a flower upon its grave.

Rivers had not surely looked to see, in his dungeon, the forsaken and the defrauded girl, for whom he had shown so little love.  He knew not, at first, how to receive her.  What offices could she do for him—­what influence exercise—­how lighten the burden of his doom—­how release him from his chains?  Nothing of this could she perform—­and what did she there?  For sympathy, at such a moment, he cared little for such sympathy, at least, as he could command.  His pride and ambition, heretofore, had led him to despise and undervalue the easy of attainment.  He was always grasping after the impossible.  The fame which he had lost for ever, grew doubly attractive to his mind’s eye from the knowledge of this fact.  The society, which had expelled him from its circle and its privileges, was an Eden in his imagination, simply on that account.  The love of Edith Colleton grew more desirable from her scorn;—­and the defeat of hopes so daring, made his fierce spirit writhe within him, in all the pangs of disappointment, only neutralized by his hope of revenge.  And that hope was now gone; the dungeon and the doom were all that met his eyes;—­and what had she, his victim, to do in his prison-cell, and with his prison feelings—­she whom Providence, even in her own despite, was now about to avenge?  No wonder he turned away from her in the bitterness of the thought which her appearance must necessarily have inspired.

“Turn not away!—­speak to me, Guy—­speak to me, if you have pity in your soul!  You shall not drive me from you—­you shall not dismiss me now.  I should have obeyed you at another time, though you had sent me to my death—­but I can not obey you now.  I am strong now, strong—­very strong since I can say so much.  I am come to be with you to the last, and, if it be possible, to die with you; and you shall not refuse me.  You shall not—­oh, you will not—­you can not—­”