This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 edition. Excerpt: ...out sly hints that when I tried my luck next, fortune might possibly be more generous to me. Don Esteban himself appeared to sympathize sincerely with my sorrow, and evinced the warmest sense of gratitude for the past. Even the Fra tried a little goodnature, but it sat ill upon him, and it was easy to see that he entertained a great mistrust of me. From the brief experience of what I suffered in these few days, I am decidedly of opinion that rich men are far more impatient under reverses and disappointments than poor ones! It was a marvellous change for one like me, whose earlier years, it is unnecessary to remind the reader, were not passed in the lap of that comfortable wet nurse called "affiuence," and yet with all this brilliant present and still more fascinating future, at the very first instance of an opposition to my will, I grew sad, dispirited, and morose. I should have been very angry with myself for my ingratitude, but that I set it all down to the score of love; and so I went about the house, visiting each room where Donna Maria used to sit, reading her books, gazing at her picture, and feeding my mind with a hundred fancies, which the next moment of thought told me were now impossible. Don Esteban, whose grief for the loss of his daughter was in a manner divided with mine, would not suffer me to leave him, and although the place itself served to keep open the wound of my regret, and the Fra's presence was anything but conciliatory, I passed several days at the villa. It would have been the greatest relief to me could I have persuaded myself to be candid with Don Esteban, and told him frankly the true story of my life. l felt that all the consolations which he offered me were of no avail, simply because I had...