Page:The Enchantress.pdf/29

26 seas lies a small island; there are aged trees and early blossoms; and amid them myriads of shining insects and bright-winged birds make the solitude glad with life; but they are its sole inhabitants. Once, driven away by a tempest from its ordinary course, a ship discovered the little isle. The Spaniards landed; they took possession in the name of the Madonna, and with pieces of grey rock piled up a cross. Human eye has never since dwelt on that lovely and lonely shore; but beneath the shadow of that cross lie the mortal remains of your cousin Medora,—Gradually I allowed some sign of returning life to appear; the old nurse, who was bending over the body, was the first to explain, 'Bring a looking-glass, for there is breath within those lips.' The slight cloud left on the mirror was as the very atmosphere of hope; eyes dim with weeping, cheeks pale with watching, were lighted up on the instant.

"I felt a new and keep happiness in the happiness I had given. It needs to tell how I gradually recovered, and how the parents, whose very life seemed bound up in their child's, were never weary of gazing on their recovered treasure. But a grief of which I had not dreamt awaited me. Medora had been betrothed to a young Sicilian nobleman. The moment an interview was permitted, the lover was at my feet, full of that hope and that joy he was never to know again. You are aware how the marriage was broken off, on the plea of a vow to the Virgin made