At night alone she existed,--at her moon-lit casement
alone she breathed freely; and never did the moonlight fall on a
lovelier form, or gild a more angelic brow, or gleam on eyes that
returned more pure and congenial rays. The mutual and friendly light
seemed like the correspondence of spirits who glided on the alternate
beams, and, passing from the glow of the planet to the glory of a mortal
eye, felt that to reside in either was heaven. * * * * * * * *

“She lingered at that casement till she imagined that the clipped and
artificially straitened treillage of the garden was the luxuriant and
undulating foliage of the trees of her paradise isle--that the flowers
had the same odour as that of the untrained and spontaneous roses that
once showered their leaves under her naked feet--that the birds sung to
her as they had once done when the vesper-hymn of her pure heart
ascended along with their closing notes, and formed the holiest and most
acceptable anthem that perhaps ever wooed the evening-breeze to waft it
to heaven. “This delusion would soon cease. The stiff and stern monotony of the
parterre, where even the productions of nature held their place as if
under the constraint of duty, forced the conviction of its unnatural
regularity on her eye and soul, and she turned to heaven for relief. Who
does not, even in the first sweet agony of passion? Then we tell that
tale to heaven which we would not trust to the ear of mortal--and in the
withering hour that must come to all whose love is only mortal, we again
call on that heaven which we have intrusted with our secret, to send us
back one bright messenger of consolation on those thousand rays that its
bright, and cold, and passionless orbs, are for ever pouring on the
earth as if in mockery. We ask, but is the petition heard or answered? We weep, but do not we feel that those tears are like rain falling on
the sea? _Mare infructuosum._ No matter. Revelation assures us there is
a period coming, when all petitions suited to our state shall be
granted, and when “tears shall be wiped from all eyes.” In revelation,
then, let us trust--in any thing but our own hearts. But Isidora had not
yet learned that theology of the skies, whose text is, “Let us go into
the house of mourning.” To her still the night was day, and her sun was
the “moon walking in its brightness.” When she beheld it, the
recollections of the isle rushed on her heart like a flood; and a figure
soon appeared to recal and to realize them. “That figure appeared to her every night without disturbance or
interruption; and though her knowledge of the severe restraint and
regularity of the household caused her some surprise at the facility
with which Melmoth apparently defied both, and visited the garden every
night, yet such was the influence of her former dream-like and romantic
existence, that his continued presence, under circumstances so
extraordinary, never drew from her a question with regard to the means
by which he was enabled to surmount difficulties insurmountable to all
others. “There were, indeed, two extraordinary circumstances attendant on these
meetings. Though seeing each other again in Spain, after an interval of
three years elapsing since they had parted on the shores of an isle in
the Indian sea, neither had ever inquired what circumstances could have
led to a meeting so unexpected and extraordinary. On Isidora’s part this
incurious feeling was easily accounted for. Her former existence had
been one of such a fabulous and fantastic character, that the improbable
had become familiar to her,--and the familiar only, improbable. Wonders
were her natural element; and she felt, perhaps, less surprised at
seeing Melmoth in Spain, than when she first beheld him treading the
sands of her lonely island. With Melmoth the cause was different, though
the effect was the same. His destiny forbid alike curiosity or surprise. The world could show him no greater marvel than his own existence; and
the facility with which he himself passed from region to region,
mingling with, yet distinct from all his species, like a wearied and
uninterested spectator rambling through the various seats of some vast
theatre, where he knows none of the audience, would have prevented his
feeling astonishment, had he encountered Isidora on the summit of the
Andes. “During a month, through the course of which she had tacitly permitted
these nightly visits beneath her casement--(at a distance which indeed
might have defied Spanish jealousy itself to devise matter of suspicion
out of,--the balcony of her window being nearly fourteen feet above the
level of the garden, where Melmoth stood)--during this month, Isidora
rapidly, but imperceptibly, graduated through those stages of feeling
which all who love have alike experienced, whether the stream of passion
be smooth or obstructed. In the first, she was full of anxiety to speak
and to listen, to hear and to be heard. She had all the wonders of her
new existence to relate; and perhaps that indefinite and unselfish hope
of magnifying herself in the eyes of him she loved, which induces us in
our first encounter to display all the eloquence, all the powers, all
the attractions we possess, not with the pride of a competitor, but with
the humiliation of a victim. The conquered city displays all its wealth
in hopes of propitiating the conqueror. It decorates him with all its
spoils, and feels prouder to behold him arrayed in them, than when she
wore them in triumph herself. That is the first bright hour of
excitement, of trembling, but hopeful and felicitous anxiety. Then we
think we never can display enough of talent, of imagination, of all that
can interest, of all that can dazzle. We pride ourselves in the homage
we receive from society, from the hope of sacrificing that homage to our
beloved--we feel a pure and almost spiritualized delight in our own
praises, from imagining they render us more worthy of meriting _his_,
from whom we have received the _grace_ of love to deserve them--we
glorify ourselves, that we may be enabled to render back the glory to
him from whom we received it, and for whom we have kept it in trust,
only to tender it back with that rich and accumulated interest of the
heart, of which we would pay the uttermost farthing, if the payment
exacted the last vibration of its fibres,--the last drop of its blood. No saint who ever viewed a miracle performed by himself with a holy and
self-annihilating abstraction from _seity_, has perhaps felt a purer
sentiment of perfect devotedness, than the female who, in her first
hours of love, offers, at the feet of her worshipped one, the brilliant
wreath of music, painting, and eloquence,--and only hopes, with an
unuttered sigh, that the rose of love will not be unnoticed in the
garland. “Oh!