"Bessie,' I said, 'do you often see Miss Chetwynd?" "Not lately,' said the child; she has had so little time to spare.'

"What has occupied her time so exclusively?' I asked.

"Bessie was silent; not because she affected deafness, but because she did not understand the terms of my question. "Has she been ill?' I inquired.

"I suppose not,' said the child; 'because till last week she went out every day with Mr. Needham, in his curricle.'

"Then,' I exclaimed, forgetting, in my fears for her health, my indignation that she should have condescended to be driven out in Mr. Needham's curricle, 'she has doubtless been ill since last week.'

"That cannot be,' returned the child, innocently, 'because she was married last Tuesday."

"Married! Oh! what a torrent of maddening thoughts rushed in upon me. Had Almeria, my beloved, my plighted bride-had she indeed united herself to another, when he who had perilled his life to save hers was suffering sickness and pain for her sake? I could not support the conviction of her perfidy; I hid my face in my hands and sobbed aloud. The child, alarmed at the result of her communication, ran down stairs, and summoned the first person she met to my assistance; this happened to be Mr. Digby. He immediately came to me, and the once morose, blunt cynic could scarcely have been recognised in the kind and sympathising friend who told me to take comfort, and poured upon me sentences of consolation; not very original, perhaps, but not the less well meant and sensible.

"And how can you account for this base perfidy?' I inquired. "My opinion of Miss Chetwynd,' he replied, was, as you are aware, never a good one, and Grace Bertie, although not willing to speak unfavourably of her cousin, has partly acknowledged to me that she was about equally prepossessed in favour of Mr. Needham and yourself, and was resolved to accept the first who proposed to her. You would have been (strange perversion of terms!) the happy man, but when your recovery was pronounced scarcely probable, and Mr. Needham earnestly urged his suit, the present lover triumphed over the absent one, and she accepted his proposals.*

Ungrateful, heartless woman!' I ejaculated; and did her father countenance her in this unfeeling inconstancy?'

6

"Mr. Chetwynd's conduct perplexes me greatly,' replied Mr. Digby, and as Grace Bertie has been absent from his house some weeks I have had no clue to guide my conjectures respecting it. He was, till lately, a fond and devoted father, and appeared properly and naturally anxious to investigate most carefully the pretensions of any suitor striving to obtain the hand of his daughter;

but the offer of Mr. Needham was eagerly accepted, and he seemed only too happy to think that Almeria would no longer be an inmate of his house. He gave away his daughter, and she departed with her husband on a honeymoon excursion. Yesterday Grace Bertie received a doleful letter from her. It appeared that Mr. Needham had made no inquiries respecting her fortune, fearing, doubtless, lest a settlement should be demanded from him, and feeling sure that Mr. Chetwynd would fulfil his often-avowed intention of giving Almeria thirty thousand pounds on her marriage. Immediately after the ceremony he received a present of five hundred pounds from his father-in-law, and an intimation that he intended from time to time to assist him, but did not propose to bind himself to allow his daughter any particular income. Mr. Needham, who had only kept his creditors at bay by repeated assurances that he was on the point of marrying an heiress, was much alarmed by this notification, and immediately made interest with a clerk in the Bank to ascertain whether the large sum in the three per cents. possessed by Mr. Chetwynd was still in its accustomed place. The reply was perfectly satisfactory; the money had not been sold out, and the disappointed son-in-law could only impute the old gentleman's sudden niggardliness to the love of power and sway. Most happy do I feel, my dear Leonard, that you have no cause to speculate on the matter; for had Miss Chetwynd been able to realize the burlesque description of an heiress in the "Rivals," and "to feed her parrot with small pearls, and make her thread-papers of bank notes," I should still have felt truly sorry to have seen her your wife."

"After the first shock had passed over I did not suffer so severely from Almeria's inconstancy as might have been expected. Mr. Digby appeared in the unwonted character of a kind and benevolent friend, and Grace Bertie-but how shall I describe her?-her companionable qualities, her music, her singing, her literary acquirements, and more than these, the sparkling good humour which imparted a charm to all that she said and did? Everybody seemed quite pleased and happy except my stepmother. "I wish,' she said one morning when she was alone with me, 'that Miss Bertie would bring her visit to an end.'

"That is rather ungrateful of you,' I replied, for you confessed to me that she was a very welcome guest when she offered to come to you.'

"True,' she said, but I am convinced that she had sinister motives in her offer; I am sure that she has designs on Mr. Digby, and that she is likely to succeed.'

"A design to be his heiress?' I asked.

"Rather to be his richly jointured widow,' replied Mrs. Turville. I should never have pressed her, as I did some days ago, to prolong her stay, had not Mr. Digby entreated me to do so,

and at the same time slipped this pretty ruby ring on my finger; but I wish now that I had refused his request. I happened accidentally yesterday to overhear a few words between them [most likely my stepmother had been listening at the door!], and he was talking to her about marriage and a settlement.'

6

"Impossible!' I exclaimed; Grace Bertie could never contemplate such a sacrifice; she will never add to the list of those with whom it is said that

"Mammon wins his way, though seraphs might despair.” '

"What "seraphs" may be particularly interested in Miss Bertie's flirtations I am yet to learn,' said my stepmother, directing a very keen and scrutinizing glance at me; but if any such there be, I think they are very likely to be reduced to despair; she has acted an extremely insidious part; I am sure I shall never think well of anybody again.'

"This speech conveyed some intelligence to me, for I was not till then aware that Mrs. Turville had ever thought well of Grace Bertie; the whole of the conversation, indeed, had conveyed to me important intelligence, for I felt that I loved Grace Bertie, and that I could not endure the thought of her marriage with another. I immediately sought Mr. Digby, and as I knew him to be an admirer of plain dealing, I told him at once the conjectures of Mrs. Turville, and begged to be informed whether there was any truth in them.

"He was on the point of replying to me, when Grace Bertie entered. I instantly changed the subject, but Mr. Digby, to my great horror and amazement, recapitulated the whole of my communication to the blushing and embarrassed Grace.

666

"I have wooed and won Grace Bertie, Leonard,' he said to me, but it has been in the style of a royal proxy; I have courted her for another person, who I thought would fear to do it for himself; I trust soon to see her united to a young man who I feel certain is sincerely attached to her, although he has never taken me into his confidence.'

666

"Do I know him, sir?" I asked, in mingled hope and fear. "I believe you know him tolerably well now,' he replied, but you never knew him at all while he was paying his addresses to Miss Chetwynd. And now, having given you this clue to his identity, I will leave you with Grace Bertie, who, I doubt not, will be willing to enlighten you still further on the subject.'

"Oh! what a happy evening did we pass, and how much was said in it! My father was contented, my stepmother triumphant, and Mr. Digby lavish of his kindness both by words and deeds. He insisted on making a handsome settlement on Grace, besides promising to bequeath me the whole of his property; and unfeigned was his satisfaction when we both cheerfully agreed to

accompany him in a visit which he deemed it necessary to make to the West Indies to inspect the management of his estates.

"Our wedding-day soon arrived, and, just as we were quitting the church, another bridal party were entering it. We looked on them in surprise; the bridegroom we knew well, the bride by sight the former was no other than Mr. Chetwynd, the latter, a blooming, buxom girl of nineteen, the niece of his housekeeper, who had been for three months on a visit to her aunt, and whose sudden conquest of his heart furnished a sufficient reason why he should have felt anxious to see his daughter married to anybody, and why he should have felt unwilling to bind himself to give her a large marriage portion, when it appeared so extremely likely that he might present her with a bevy of little brothers and sisters to share in her claims.

"We went over to the West Indies, the climate agreed with us, and we resolved to fix our residence there. My marriage was one of perfect happiness, and the sweet temper and varied talents of my Grace contrived to work a most delightful reformation in Mr. Digby; he ceased to be suspicious and cynical, and during the remaining ten years of his life contributed to our domestic comfort as much as, I trust, we did to his. My wife and myself returned lately to England, and Grace was eager to inquire the fate of the Honourable Mrs. Needham, who had never answered several letters that she had addressed to her. We found her living in a style half-shabby, half-showy; she had lost every trace of beauty, and her innate shrewishness had come out in stronglymarked colours. Indeed, when a husband is never out of debt, and always out of humour, more amiable spirits than that of Almeria Chetwynd may find it difficult to sustain the trial with equanimity.

"Mr. Chetwynd is still alive, and the father of eleven fine boys and girls; he doles out to his son-in-law an occasional reluctant pittance, and most happy am I that I do not stand in that degree of relationship to him, and that I have escaped the troubles of a narrow income and a shrewish wife, and gained the blessing of affluence and domestic peace through the recovery of my lost senses by means of the salutary influence of a cold water cure."

With most unholy rapture on the calm
Of the night's breathing solitude. Within,
Whate'er of pomp, of splendour, or delight,
To ravish sight or sense the earth could give,
Were congregated in one radiant throng;
Dark eyes were flashing, from whose liquid fire
Glances fell round like starlight, and from lips
Richer than poet-dreams, harmonious sounds
Breath'd forth the soul of melody. Robes that hung
Bow'd by their jewell'd gorgeousness, were lost
On forms that dimm'd the lustrous gauds of pomp
With beauty yet more rare.
From arched roofs,

Fretted with burnish'd gold, ten thousand lamps
Threw odoriferous rays, that back recoil'd,
Lost in the mingled blaze of life and light,
Flashing beneath, as though the night of time
Should never close it in. From these retired,
One solitary man had woo'd the breath

Of the pure starlit heaven; and now he stood
Upon a marbl'd terrace, to whose height
The sounds of revelry came vaguely up,

Mellow'd and dream-like. Not as one enwreath'd
By thoughts luxurious was that listless man;
For the heart's weariness was written deep
Upon the aching brow that to the heavens
Bared its pale front, as though the silent dew
That played so coldly round each feverish pulse
Brought peace to their wild throbbings. He was bent,
Not with the weight of years, but with the sense
Of years in folly spent, of talents bowed
To vilest purposes by self-abasement,
By coward vices, to whose earthly thrall
He in his wisdom's strength had blindly knelt,
And vainly yearn'd to vanquish. Once he cast-
But once a wild, appealing glance to heaven,
As though he wish'd to pass his soul away,
So weary was it; but the thought that lit
His eye with a brief glory fell and died.
Again the same dark, listless gloom enwrapp'd
His brow as with a shadow; earth once more
Enter'd his heart-earth with her sated train
Of hopes, and fears, and wild imaginings,
That long to him had been a broken dream.
And now, for one brief moment, as he lay
His languid head upon that moonlit stone,
The sickness of the soul, satiety,

The what he had been, was, and should have been,
Came o'er him all, one flood of bitter thought,
Bowing him to the dust; till, fast from eyes
Unused to such a mood, hot tears gush'd forth-
He wept !