Page:Peterson's Magazine 1842, Volume I.pdf/238

. The Lord of Alverstein shall die.

Where none shall close his glazing eye.

"And clasping her fatherless boy to her widowed bosom, she only vowed he should never leave the boundaries of his paternal home. It is vain, however, to contend against destiny; she slept with her fathers on a foreign shore; upon the fatal field that hurried so many of the young and noble of our land to an untimely grave, apart from his followers, and alone and unaided, the heir of this wide domain' yielded his dying breath. The lifeless body of my honored father, the gentle and the good, was confided to the billowy sea on his return from a distant and more genial clime, where he had gone with the vain hope of restoring health to a shattered constitution. With fearful exactness has the prophecy of that friend of darkness been fulfilled, and when I, his orphan child, am at rest in an early tomb,' the lordly race of Alverstein will be no more."

It was an age of superstition, and as with a voice scarcely articulate, she concluded, a leaden weight seemed to press upon the young heart of the shuddering Lina, but pausing for a moment to rally herself, she exclaimed with a beaming smile and in her gayest tones,

"Is this the mountain load of misery under which you have been laboring for years? The weighty argument you urge in favor of invariably absenting yourself from a court you are calculated to adorn and immured within this feudal pile with no companion but that withered duenna, denying yourself all the dear delights of social life? Oh, Eva! "I deeply regret that one whose intellectual superiority is so generally acknowledged should thus weakly yield to the dark power of superstition."

She paused, but her words, intended to assure, conveyed no consolation to the bosom of her companion. The impressions received in the tender years of childhood could not so readily be erased. For a moment, she made no reply, and the low twanging of a guitar at that instant, breaking on the stillness of the evening, effectively precluded further conversation. Music tunes the chords of the soul to its own harmony, and as with bold and skillful touch the hand of some unseen performer swept over the quivering strings, the following words, accompanied in a rich, manly voice, exerted a sweetly soothing influence on the stricken heart of at least one fair and eager listener. When the summer clouds are weeping O'er bush, and dell, and tree, When the winds are sweeping Through the lone forest,

When moonbeams are streaming On bending branches and flow's When starlight is gleaming I hie me to thy bow'r.

As music's strains of gladness, Or dying breezes sweet; Those tones of thrilling sadness My raptur'd senses greet.

And pure as in their lightness The stars eternal burn. On me, their mad'ning brightness Those eyes may fondly turn. "It is Everard, my brother!" "He has preceded the carriages to be dispatched by my father, your guardian, to conduct us to Castle Lalenburg, and thus delicately makes known his arrival."

Clasping her hands with girlish delight, with the speed and lightness of a fawn, she bounded to meet and welcome him.

A few hours afterward, in a superb saloon, lighted by innumerable lamps, the stately head of the young Everard of Lalenburg, bent in wrapt attention to the tale, by the persuasion of her friend, Eva had again been induced to breathe into a wondering ear. She had finished, but there was no forced enjoyment in the merry laugh that greeted his startled hearers as the young prince, taking the trembling hand of the lovely narrator, exclaimed in a voice whose every tone was glee.

"And is this the secret to which you so darkly alluded? and which I deemed must forever press its palsying weight on all my hopes and happiness?" But assuming a more serious air, he continued, "Had the sad story of her mournful doom been confided to the Lady Eva at a less tender age, it had not, I trust, thus preyed withering blight upon a heart, which, in this instance, has proved alas! but too susceptible. At a late period, the natural energy of her character and the riper judgment of mature years would have enabled her to make inquiries and ascertain facts, which must undoubtedly dispel her groundless fears. Dearest lady, the'heir of Alverstein did not die upon the ensanguined plain,' unaided and alone. The arms of my father's pil were dying heads, and with the rude forms of mail-clad warriors bending near, he yielded his latest breath. This instance, at least, exposes the falsehood of the random guesses of the moonlight phantom—but again, wonderful to relate—has she spoken with prophetic truth—for truly, the race of Alverstein will be no more when the sweet face of its last descendant is smiling in beauty beneath the gem-lit coronet of a Princess of Lalenburg."

Eva spoke not, but the full tide of rapture, which rushed from an overflowing heart to a countenance now animated with hope and happiness, told more than feeble language can express. And when, in a few short months, Eva of Lalenburg, the loveliest princess of the imperial court, was presented at the foot of Austria's throne, what eye in all the bridal train beamed with such laughing joyousness as that of the happy Lina?

lowed his