she had finished, "is an eternal obligation conferred upon myself and my family, never to be repaid, never to be cancelled." The presence of Harcourt, who still continued a stranger to him, and his heart overflowing as he spoke, so choked his utterance as to prevent his saying more; when after an interval, addressing himself to Rosilia, he added, "Let us thank God, my dear child, that you have so escaped the power of that audacious man. Happily removed from superstition and its fallacious influence upon the senses, you were assured you had nothing to dread in the gloomy abode in which he shut you but from his persecutions."
Anxious to give Rosilia the repose essential after the alarms she had sustained, the ladies retired from the apartment, when Lord Deloraine, not having had a previous opportunity of introducing his friend Colonel Harcourt, embraced this occasion of so doing. The gentlemen in separating were conducted to their respective chambers.
Harcourt in closing the door of his apartment, at last free from the painful observations of others, gave vent to the conflicts which overpowered him. In beholding a second time the object of his admiration, to behold her encompassed by such extraordinary circumstances, sinking upon the bosom of a preserver—of a rival—and one who was no other than his friend, the much-esteemed, noble, and magnanimous Douglas! his preserver also, and but for whom
