into the colonade on the garden side of the house, whence she had a view
over the park and the shore as far as the ship-yard. There, leaning
against the shaft of a pillar, under the shade of the blossoming shrubs,
she stood gazing thoughtfully to the southward. She was dreaming of the past, of her childhood's joys and privations.
Fate had bereft her of a mother's love, that sun of life's spring. Below
her, in a splendid mausoleum of purple porphyry, lay the mortal remains
of the beautiful woman who had given her birth, and who had been snatched
away before she could give her infant a first caress. But all round the
solemn monument gardens bloomed in the sunshine, and on the further side
of the wall covered with creepers, was the ship-yard, the scene of
numberless delightful games. She sighed as she looked at the tall hulks,
and watched for the man who, from her earliest girlhood, had owned her
heart, whose image was inseparable from every thing of joy and beauty
that she had ever known, and every grief her young soul had suffered
under. Constantine, the younger son of Clemens the shipbuilder, had been her
brothers' companion and closest friend. He had proved himself their
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