- peared to our hero to dwell with peculiar
softness on the words, "I'll never leave thee;" Hamilton thought he had never seen her so bewitching, and whispered to her, that he could live no longer without her; and that unless she consented to be immediately his, his reason, if not even his life, must pay the price of the delay. "Could you bear, my beloved Maria, to see me a miserable lunatic or a lifeless corpse?" In the one or the other, I should follow you," replied she, in a still softer whisper. At this time, a letter was brought to Hamilton, which Maria could not help perceiving to be in a woman's hand. Our hero seeing it to be the same writing as he had received the day before from an unknown lady, put it into his pocket; but the servant telling him that a porter waited for the answer,
