She approached us timidly, avoided our caresses, nor shook off her embarrassment till some serious discussion or lofty theme called her for awhile out of herself.  Her beauty grew as a rose, which, opening to the summer wind, discloses leaf after leaf till the sense aches with its excess of loveliness.  A slight and variable colour tinged her cheeks, and her motions seemed attuned by some hidden harmony of surpassing sweetness.  We redoubled our tenderness and earnest attentions.  She received them with grateful smiles, that fled swift as sunny beam from a glittering wave on an April day.

Our only acknowledged point of sympathy with her, appeared to be Evelyn.  This dear little fellow was a comforter and delight to us beyond all words.  His buoyant spirit, and his innocent ignorance of our vast calamity, were balm to us, whose thoughts and feelings were over-wrought and spun out in the immensity of speculative sorrow.  To cherish, to caress, to amuse him was the common task of all.  Clara, who felt towards him in some degree like a young mother, gratefully acknowledged our kindness towards him.  To me, O! to me, who saw the clear brows and soft eyes of the beloved of my heart, my lost and ever dear Idris, re-born in his gentle face, to me he was dear even to pain; if I pressed him to my heart, methought I clasped a real and living part of her, who had lain there through long years of youthful happiness.

It was the custom of Adrian and myself to go out each day in our skiff to forage in the adjacent country.  In these expeditions we were seldom accompanied by Clara or her little charge, but our return was an hour of hilarity.  Evelyn ransacked our stores with childish eagerness, and we always brought some new found gift for our fair companion.  Then too we made discoveries of lovely scenes or gay palaces, whither in the evening we all proceeded.  Our sailing expeditions were most divine, and with a fair wind or transverse course we cut the liquid waves; and, if talk failed under the pressure of thought, I had my clarionet with me, which awoke the echoes, and gave the change to our careful minds.  Clara at such times often returned to her former habits of free converse and gay sally; and though our four hearts alone beat in the world, those four hearts were happy.

One day, on our return from the town of Como, with a laden boat, we expected as usual to be met at the port by Clara and Evelyn, and we were somewhat surprised to see the beach vacant.  I, as my nature prompted, would not prognosticate evil, but explained it away as a mere casual incident.  Not so Adrian.  He was seized with sudden trembling and apprehension, and he called to me with vehemence to steer quickly for land, and, when near, leapt from the boat, half falling into the water; and, scrambling up the steep bank, hastened along the narrow strip of garden, the only level space between the lake and the mountain.  I followed without delay; the garden and inner court