But at night it beamed ever upon me, becoming as the months passed, the one thing to hold to and muse over when the world grew a little noisy in my ears and the never ceasing conflict of the ages beat a trifle too loudly on heart and brain.
"Meanwhile no word of her, only of her villainous father and brother; no token that she had escaped evil or was removed from want.

If I had loved her I could not have succored her, for I did not know where to find her.
Her countenance illumined my wall, but her fair young self lay for all I knew sheltered within the darkness and silence of the tomb.
"At length my morbid broodings worked out their natural result.

A dull melancholy settled upon me which nothing could break.

Even the news that my cousin who had lost her husband a month after marriage, had returned to America with expectation to remain, scarcely caused a ripple in my apathy.

Was I sinking into a hypochrondriac?
or was my passion for the beautiful brunette dead?
I determined to solve the doubt.
"Seeking her where I knew she would be found, I gazed again upon her beauty.