of life with deep and melancholy feeling; and at length interweaving her conversation with incidents more personal, she gave them a sketch of her own history, at first alluding to it in a detached manner, but afterwards detailing it more minutely. She was of a good family, she said, of Sienna; but there were circumstances had occurred, amongst the many changes that had taken place in Italy, which had reduced them in circumstances. Her brother, whom they had seen, was once an officer in Napoleon's army of Italy; he had served in many campaigns, and might have been rewarded, she said, but the emperor had fallen, and her brother with him. Her father had been dead for years, and her mother did not long survive him, so the only relation she had to live with was an old aunt, who, God forgive her! she exclaimed, had aided to make her wretched.

It was about five years ago, and her brother was absent, when she became acquainted

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quainted with one she wished she had ne ver seen-" He was your countryman," she added, turning to Charles." He was handsome, accomplished, and elegant, and he seemed frank, kind, and honourable. I was young and ardent, and I loved him almost before I knew it. I was fond and inexperienced, and I married him, without consulting any who could have advised me better. There were many reasons made me conceal what I had done. In the first place, he was a foreigner, and in the next, a heretic (that is, as we think); but what was more powerful than all, he desired me to do so. He had a reason for it, it seems, for shortly after our marriage, he found a pretext to leave me, and for two years never returned to Italy."

During his absence, she added, she became acquainted with a young German officer, who having met with an accident near the house where she lived with her aunt, was carried in, and received from her great kindness and attention.

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turned it with warmth, and in the end she became his mistress in fact, though not avowedly.

"You blush, silly girl," she continued, looking at Mary, into whose cheek her tale had called the eloquent blood. There was something of asperity at first in her manner as she observed it, but it soon softened down into sadness, and she added, with a sigh-" And yet why should you not? Happy are those whose innocent feelings are yet alive to shame! but I will shock you no more, if I can help it" and she went on to tell them, that while she was living in this state, her husband returned, and sought an interview with her, when, to her surprise, she found that he was already acquainted with the whole of her connexion with the young officer, and only proposed to turn it to his own advantage. He did not reproach her for her infidelity-he said not a word in defence of his own conduct in leaving her, but coolly demanded that she should lend

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lend herself to a scheme that he had previously concerted with her aunt, for making the other marry her. She at first steadily refused to follow the path of crime thus pointed out to her, and resolved to bear her shame, whatever it might be; but the villain held out so many threats to her, not only of exposure, but of the anger of her brother, and his own vengeance, which she now saw that he was capable of wreaking on her to the most dreadful degree; so that what between fear on the one side, and the persuasions of her aunt on the other, she consented to become the wretched tool of their purposes.

The plan laid was, to work upon the feelings of the young officer; and it was so contrived, that she appeared to fall ill, and gradually seemed to approach the brink of death. The young officer paid her the kindest attention, but never for a moment seemed to entertain an idea of marrying her. Indeed the attachment he had shewn her, appeared from the first

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more as a matter of gratitude for the kindness and attention she had displayed towards him, while labouring under the consequences of the accident he had met with, than from any strong affection. Though he was kind and liberal to a degree, and certainly personally admired her, he never, she said, professed any very ardent love, nor made her any promises of constant regard.

Finding that in all probability the idea would never occur to him, unless suggested by some one else, her aunt informed him at length, that her niece's malady proceeded from remorse for her connexion with him. A surgeon was found to pronounce her within a few hours of death, and a priest appeared to administer extreme unction; but this last rite of their religion he declared he could not perform in the agitated state of the penitent's mind.

The young officer was a sincere Catholic, and he was moved; the aunt went