Her late cheerful abode was deserted; and Arthur could obtain no information respecting Lucie, except that she had gone back to France with her relative, immediately after the melancholy event.
"Gone, without one kind farewell, one word of remembrance!" was the first bitter reflection of Arthur, on receiving this intelligence.

"She, who might have been all the world to him, whose sunny smiles could have cheered the darkest hour of affliction,--she was gone! and, amidst the attractions of wealth, and the charms of society and friends, how soon might he fade from her remembrance!" But that was not a time to indulge the regrets of a romantic passion; the situation of his parents required the support and consolations of filial tenderness; and no selfish indulgence could, for a moment, detain him from them.

He hastily abandoned the home of his childhood--the scenes of maturer happiness; and, re-passing the barrier of his native hills, in a few days rejoined his parents at the sea-port, where they waited his arrival.

They had made arrangements to take passage in the first vessel which sailed for Boston, and Arthur did not hesitate a moment to attend them in their arduous undertaking.

For a time, indeed, his active spirit bent beneath the pressure of disappointment, and all places were alike indifferent to him.