LIONEL LACKLAND. 229 



dead, unspeculative eye, would be as though the armies of the 

 locust had alighted there, leaving it leafless and desolate. 

 Within this fairy land, formerly stood a large antique bouse, 

 called the Trefuses, or the Fortified House; it was a very old 

 structure, and though in many parts falling away, the rough and 

 heavy stone walls still defied the imperishable elements which 

 had assailed it for so many ages. It stood out, from the gay 

 scene around it, like somemagician'spalace, throwing its gloomy 

 shadow over the laughing flowers beneath ; the perennial ivy had 

 crept, with its tensile branches, over the old gabled ends, hiding, 

 in the flattering smile of its green leaves, the progress of decay. 

 This was the residence of Clement Westberry, the father of the 

 fair Ellen. Ellen was an only child ; her mother was by birth 

 an Italian. I have heard my grandmother speak with rapture 

 of the beautiful Catherina Brunnati. " Yes, Lionel," said she 

 to me one day, when talking of her lovely daughter, " Catherina 

 Brunnati was a creature to be afraid of; her passions were over- 

 whelming, her beauty seductive. She never loved her husband, 

 and yet she could not live without love; but she died, Lionel, 

 even in giving birth to her child. Oh, it was dreadful and heart- 

 breaking to see those large, dark, liquid eyes, with the film of 

 death upon them, and that voluptuous form cold and sunken. 

 Her little Ellen sprung, like a flower, from her mother's grave. 

 So died the beautiful Catherina Brunnati. Westberry was a 

 jealous man, and after his marriage he relinquished all his com- 

 mercial engagements, and with a small, but sufficient patrimony, 

 determined to secure his lovely bride from the blandishments of 

 the world. He felt the danger of exposing such a heart to the 

 fascinations for which she languished. She might have sinned. 

 She died ; and though he felt the loss of his beautiful wife, he 

 was at the same time relieved from the hell of his own fears. 

 But on her dark-eyed, melancholy child, the father ever watched 

 with the deepest solicitude; his love and attention were constantly 

 lavished on his child." 



In happy infancy we linked our young afl*ections together ; we 

 played and sported together — I was her knight, and Ellen was 

 my " ladie faire ;" but I must pass over the time of " prattling 

 infancy." Ellen had reached her seventeenth year; her com- 

 plexion was pale, vividly pale; her long, dark, luxuriant hair, 

 tangled in many a wreath and curl, fell wantoning upon her full 

 and swelling bosom; but those eyes ! they have no type; it was 

 not in the lustre of those orbs, it was not in the mere form of 

 those visionary eyes, but in the fascination of her look, in the 

 gazy utterance of that love, which overwhelmed her heart. 



" There was a light in Ellen's angel face 

 That made a sunshine in the shady place." 



Seldom was it that those gushing lips murmured their music; 

 Ellen thought too intensely to love the vagueness of words. By 



