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Rh of her brother, the mournful realities of her own experience,—all pressed heavily upon her.

"I feel it written deep within my heart," exclaimed she, "that we are a doomed race—that to us the common success and enjoyments of life are denied! My mother perished fearfully, desperate with her wasted youth and broken heart. Guido! how soon he took refuge in a tomb, made welcome by disappointed aspirations and outraged affection! And I—how little happiness have I ever known! how friendless, how desolate, has been my existence—how thrown back upon myself! At a time when most of my age and sex are surrounded by care,—idols of the dearest and the fondest home they can ever know, I was left to myself—my sorrows unshared, my joys unthought of, my difficulties unsoothed. How soon has any little gleam of sunshine flung upon my path been overcast! Love, which to so many turns the common earth to paradise—true, deep, ay, and requited as mine has been, yet to what mortification and to what misery has it not condemned me! I seem fated to suffer for the faults of others."

But even as she spoke, her eye rested upon the yet scarcely covered grave of Francis Evelyn, and she involuntarily softened the reproach that had been linked with his memory. He had dearly