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Rh "Yes," said Guido, rising, "who shall deny that the shaft which sent the princely huntsman to the ground was a just judgment?"

"Ah! my brother," replied she, "judgment is an awful word for mortal lips to utter! Who dares pronounce that a doom is deserved? If the sudden and early death be a judgment on one, must it not be so on all? What had Henriette, so gentle, so kind, so good, done, that she should perish? Yet she died, with all the hopes, joys, and affections of life warm around her." Francesca spoke of Madame de Mercœur, but her brother was in her hidden thought;—why was he to die so young?

Rufus's stone lies in the outskirts of the forest, and in a few minutes they emerged upon the broad heath which bounds it, then like a sea of gold; for the furze was in the first glory of its spendthrift wealth.

"Look there!" exclaimed Guido, both struck with the scene, and wishing to divert Francesca's thoughts, whose eyes, fixed on the ground, were filled with tears.

Placed beside a little copse on the edge of the road, whose branches, covered with the white May, were contrasted by the long dark garlands of ivy, like some fatal love redeeming and beautifying