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168
THERESA.

tion, but served to shew her more fully the difficulty of her position.

Love is the destiny of a woman's life, and hers had been sealed on the threshold of existence: it was too late now to change the colour of or alter the past. Theresa's greatest enjoyment was to wander through the lonely gardens: though the leaf and the flower could never more be to her the companions they had been, still, when alone, they aided her in recalling the days when they were mute witnesses to vows which had the common fate of being kept but by one. The difference between herself and those of her own age consisted in this, that they looked to the future, she dwelt upon the past; they hoped, she only remembered.

The young Countess's instructors were loud in their praises of her docility and progress; the French governess remarking, "Mademoiselle est pleine des talens et des graces; mais elle est si triste et si silencieuse."

The two years passed, and Theresa was to accompany her father to Vienna. The Baron von Haitzinger, who had never quite recovered the shock of finding that his daughter could only speak German, and could neither read nor write, was utterly unprepared for the sensation she produced on her introduction into society. Theresa at twenty more than realised the promise of seventeen; yet it is singular how much the character of her beauty was changed. She had been a glad, bright, buoyant