T hus I had spent near four months in all the charms of rural occupation and retirement. Herself was but too sensible of it, and the rapid decline of her health, pierced only the more visibly through all the efforts she would make, to conceal it from me. Often did I rouse her from the irresistible gloom that overcast the blossoms of her youthful days, but, alas! I only roused her to relapse the next moment the deeper. The choice she made of her books in the little library, grew more serious and melancholy every day, and her guitar, inanimate to festive lays, resounded only the heart-breaking strain of elegiacs and funeral dirges.
This is also the reason, why I studiously avoided all questions relative to her story since our parting. At last the said to me in one of her woeful moments: "Dear Carlos, those hours which afforded me leisure from the beginning of my solitude, have been applied to write out my history, and you will once find it in a little case among the rest of my papers.
It behoves me, however, to state here; that although Elmira had written many letters to me to come and join her, they had all been intercepted, probably by the inconceivable influence of that horrid Cabal, of which I am a going to relate another wonderful instance. I never knew that Elmira had a brother, till my sweet little Amados once brought me a ring, which he fetched from one of the rooms above stairs.
It was of gold; quite plain; and had the name Emanuel engraved on it. My poor brother! At this moment I thought it would not be trespassing the laws of prudence and discretion to intreat her to give me an account of the whole business, which she did as nearly as possible in the following words:.
He was free, liberal, friendly, brave, the support of our house, and the boast and benefactor of all his dependants. Among them-was a certain Don Pedro Nunez. He succeeded by a thousand designing means, to alienate my brother's heart from the bosom of his family, and to disgust his mind with the still comforts of domestic life. Having plunged into a ceaseless round of follies and dissipations termed fashionable, he shunned the sober delight of our own conversation, and often was absent from us for many weeks together,.
