Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/115

Rh trude, and darken for an instant the bright prospect before her. She was awakened from her dream of bliss by a letter from her father, and after reading it, Helen wondered how she could ever have anticipated happiness, or if her heart could ever again thrill with pleasure. The letter was as follows:

My dear child, for so I may call you for the last time. Helen, you will say, after reading this letter, that I have never loved you, for if I feel what I express, why do I abandon you? The hand of fate separates us for ever, but the God who rules over us all, and now reads the agony of my heart, knows how dear you are to me. Child of my adored and sainted Helen, could I now press you to my heart, and say never leave me, I should be happy-happier than I can ever hope to be. You have not seen me for years, but think not I could forbear to look on the image of her who was the realization of my earliest and my fondest dream : her, whose memory is consecrated in the heart of him she blessed with her love. I have seen you when you knew not that a father was near-that his heart was keeping the unceasing watch of love over you. I have looked on your sweet young face, and said, " She is all I can wish," and I felt proud that you were mine ; then the bitter conviction would come that I dared not claim you-that you, gentle and lovely as you appeared, could never soothe my aching heart by the soft accents of tenderness- tones that sound to my ear like remembered music, and carry my thoughts far, far back in the dreary past, when she, whose pillow is now the cold sod, sat beside me, and gave me the assurance of unchanged love. Helen, you are even painfully like your mother. Attend while I give you a sketch of her history. She was an orphan niece of my father's, entirely dependent on his bounty. She was all the fondest adorer could wish, and I loved her wildly-madly. She returned my passion, but my father, a cruel, vindictive man, swore that we should never be united. He turned her from his house, and she sought a home with a distant relative. I set out to make a tour in Wales. I had been absent but a few weeks, when hearing that she was ill, I listened to the dictates of passion alone, and hurried to her abode. 'Tis useless to repeat the arguments I used to convince her that we could not live apart. We were married. My father never forgave me, and on his dying bed he left me his bitterest malediction. I fled from him in his last moments, and sought a refuge from my wretchedness in the society of her whose smile could make me forget all things else. It was there-there where I had garnered all my hopes of happiness,