name and noble station; the world’s respect reflected from his own glory:  all this joined to his own undying love, inspired me with sensations towards him, akin to those with which we regard the Giver of life.  I gave him love only.  I devoted myself to him:  imperfect creature that I was, I took myself to task, that I might become worthy of him.  I watched over my hasty temper, subdued my burning impatience of character, schooled my self-engrossing thoughts, educating myself to the best perfection I might attain, that the fruit of my exertions might be his happiness.  I took no merit to myself for this.  He deserved it all—­all labour, all devotion, all sacrifice; I would have toiled up a scaleless Alp, to pluck a flower that would please him.  I was ready to quit you all, my beloved and gifted companions, and to live only with him, for him.  I could not do otherwise, even if I had wished; for if we are said to have two souls, he was my better soul, to which the other was a perpetual slave.  One only return did he owe me, even fidelity.  I earned that; I deserved it.  Because I was mountain bred, unallied to the noble and wealthy, shall he think to repay me by an empty name and station?  Let him take them back; without his love they are nothing to me.  Their only merit in my eyes was that they were his.”

Thus passionately Perdita ran on.  When I adverted to the question of their entire separation, she replied:  “Be it so!  One day the period will arrive; I know it, and feel it.  But in this I am a coward.  This imperfect companionship, and our masquerade of union, are strangely dear to me.  It is painful, I allow, destructive, impracticable.  It keeps up a perpetual fever in my veins; it frets my immedicable wound; it is instinct with poison.  Yet I must cling to it; perhaps it will kill me soon, and thus perform a thankful office.”

In the mean time, Raymond had remained with Adrian and Idris.  He was naturally frank; the continued absence of Perdita and myself became remarkable; and Raymond soon found relief from the constraint of months, by an unreserved confidence with his two friends.  He related to them the situation in which he had found Evadne.  At first, from delicacy to Adrian he concealed her name; but it was divulged in the course of his narrative, and her former lover heard with the most acute agitation the history of her sufferings.  Idris had shared Perdita’s ill opinion of the Greek; but Raymond’s account softened and interested her.  Evadne’s constancy, fortitude, even her ill-fated and ill-regulated love, were matter of admiration and pity; especially when, from the detail of the events of the nineteenth of October, it was apparent that she preferred suffering and death to any in her eyes degrading application for the pity and assistance of her lover.  Her subsequent conduct did not diminish this interest.  At first, relieved from famine and the grave, watched over by Raymond with the tenderest assiduity, with that feeling of