"Be a shrew sometimes, but a tender-hearted woman always!" said Valamour, throwing the horoscope into the fire; and Ariette never wore the veil again, except when his peevishness required her silence.

WOMAN'S LOVE.

Oh! woman's love 's a holy light!
And when 'tis kindled ne'er can die;
It lives though treacehry and slight

To quench the constant flame may try.
Like ivy, when it grows, 'tis seen
To wear an everlasting green;
Like ivy, too, 'tis found to cling
Too often round a worthless thing.
O woman's love! at times it may

Seem cold or clouded, but it burns
With true undeviating ray,

Nor ever from its idol turns.
Its sunshine is a smile; a frown
The heavy cloud that weighs it down;

A tear its weapon is.... beware

Of woman's tears....there's danger there!

Its sweetest place on which to rest,

A constant and confiding breast.

Its joy, to meet-its death to part-
Its sepulchre, a broken heart.

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"Mercy on us!" ejaculated her pretty, lively consin, Jane Douglas, who was sitting at the window, twirling and untwirling round her fair fingers the gold chain, from which hung her eye-glass-not worn for ornament, but use, and not therefore a quizzing glass, but a necessary supplement to a pair of sparkling black eyes, whenever they wished to discern distinctly any ob ject that was more than three feet distant from them. Mercy on us! That was a terribly long and sentimental heigh-o! I wonder where it is gone to? Positively I felt it fan my cheek as it escaped out of the window, and I declare,' she continued, looking through her glass, with a well-feigned air of serious amazement, "I declare, I can see it; yes there it goes, floating like gossamer, upon that soft yellow moonbeam, over the grove of chesnut trees, in the very direction of the parish church!"

"How can you be so very ridiculous! said Agnes, half pouting, half smirking, at the fanciful railery of her sprightly cousin.

"How can you be so unamiable," retorted Jane, "to have for your companion such a discreet and trustworthy personage as myself, and yet make your heart like the prison-house of the ghost in Hamlet, the abode of untold secrets?"

"I can't say I understand you," replied Agnes, rising, and advancing towards the window with an exceedingly demure look.

"But I understand you," answered Jane, taking her hand, "thanks to these tell-tale fingers, and that ter

rible heigh-0, which by this time, I dare say, has arrived at its journey's end, creeping like a wreath of mist through the key hole of the church door, and settling itself like a diamond dew-drop, or perhaps curled round in the shape of a ring, upon the altar table. Yes!" she continued, playing with the long taper fingers of Agnes, and addressing them as if they could understand what she said, "you are never tired no no, not you-of giving melodious birth to that sweetly plaintive and enchanting air of Mehul's, since it was so rapturously praised, and a repetition of it so beseechingly implored, the other night, by a certain tall, and tolerably good-looking young gentleman, who stood watching your fairy motions with so enamoured a spirit, that he could not see who was laughing at his lack-a-daisical appearance."

"Go on-pray go on, my merry cousin," said Agnes; "you are quite poetical this evening, and it is really charming to listen to you."

"I have no doubt it is," rejoined Jane. "It is always charming to have other people do for us what we would fain have done, though we like not to do it, for ourselves."

"I dare say," said Agnes, "you think yourself a wonderfully clever girl-the very Newton of petticoat philosophers, in the discovery of love secrets.'

"Not at all; "but you know it cannot be so very difficult to perceive the symptoms of any particular malady, in a person who is so very subject to its dreadful attacks. Let me see it was last June twelvemonth, I think, when you were first seized, but that was only a slight attack, for you got well before the end of the month. Then you had another, about the beginning of August following, which lasted nearly till Michaelmas-day-then a third in November, and that stuck to you all the winter-like my aunt Rachel's cough, as she calls it. You were but just recovering from this in the spring, when-one, two,-yes, you had three terrible sharp fits, one after another, in that proverbially dangerous month, the month of May. It was hardly thought possible you could recover from the last of them, and so it was determined that the clergyman should be sent for, but-"

Agnes sprung to her harp, and leaning over it in a graceful, sylph-like attitude, first drowned the voice of Jane with an extempore prelude of crashing chords, and then silenced her, while she played divinely the saucy air of “Cease your funning."

When she had done, there was a pause; and just at that moment the moon was partially obscured by a light fleecy cloud passing over it. Agnes had returned to the window, and her eyes were directed towards that mild, pale luminary, which was now beginning to edge, with a soft, silvery radiance, the border of the cloud from which it was slowly emerging.

"And so you think, Jane," said she, taking her cousin's hand, "that my heart is like that cold chaste orb, dimmed, ever and anon, by passing clouds; but like it, reappearing again as cold and as bright as ever? I wish I could think so! You deem it, too, as inconstant-changing even as she does? Ah me! There are times when I fancy it rather the dove, wandering forth from its ark to find a resting-place, but destined to return with no olive-branch!"

"Fiddle-de-dee! - fiddle-de-dee! - fiddle-de-do! fiddle-de-dum!" exclaimed Jane, mimicking the sor

rowful cadence of her cousin's voice. At the same moment she caught her round the waist, and, in spite of herself, made her waltz three or four times up and down the room, to the tune of "Di tanti palpiti," hummed by herself. When she had dragged her about till they were both out of breath, she pulled her down by her side on a settee, and said, "Now talk to me again about chaste cold orbs, doves, arks, and olive branches; and if you do, you shall have another dance, till I have joggled this fine sentimental frippery out of you."

"You are a strange girl, Jane," said Agnes," but I still hope to see the day when that heart of yours will do penance. Recollect the fate of our poor friend Harriet Lindsey! She laughed at love till she was nineteen, and then-died of it before she was one-andtwenty!"

"As I never shall, while there are fevers, inflammations, and consumptions, to hand me out of this world into the next," rejoined Jane.-"And for my part, though poor dear Harriet had the credit of dying of a broken heart, because her lover died of a broken neck, by a fall from his landeau, I confess I always thought it was a surfeit of ice creams and strawberries that really killed her. If it had been a cold summer, and a bad fruit season, Harriet Lindsay might have looked a little pale, or so, and for a few days, perhaps, found the wing of a chicken more than she could eat at dinner; but by the end of a week, take my word for it, the knife and fork would have conquered the pocket handkerchief and the smelling bottle. Lord help us poor girls, say I, if we are born only to fall in love, and must die when we fall out. I like not such grinning love, as Falstaff says of honour. It is all very well, I grant you, to have a nice handsome fellow, sighing like a furnace,' at your elbow, and growing as thin as a winter weasel in an empty barn, for your sake; and if, after you have used him for two or three years, to plague half a dozen of your best friends who envy your conquest, you find you can really make a decent affair of the heart of it, why then

"Why then," interrupted Agnes, "I suppose Jane Douglas, spinster, would be seen some fine morning, in the proverbially dangerous month of May, going in the same direction as my heigho! only, not like it, creeping in at the key-hole of the church door."

Do you

"Oh Lord! oh Lord!" exclaimed Jane, stopping her ears with her fingers," how can you be so malicious to use that horribly Gothic word? think I would ever consent to be married by banns, and have myself proclaimed three several Sundays, with a public notice, that if any person or persons know any just cause or impediment why-Here!—be quick!sprinkle a little Eau de Cologne on my handkerchief, or I shall go into hysterics! How could you be so barbarous?"

In this vein of mutual raillery, and light-hearted mirth, did these fair cousins banter each other upon a subject which they were both afraid to discuss in a more sober strain. But though they shared a common fear, that fear had no common origin. Jane and Agnes were nearly of the same age; the former, however, having the advantage (I am not certain, by the by, that ladies are accustomed to call it an advantage) over the latter by seven or eight months, she being almost twenty, and Agnes almost out of her teens.

They had been brought up under the same roof, educated in the same school, and from their cradles, to the period of which we are now speaking, had been such inseparable companions in all the daily occupations and amusements of their whole lives, that either might have addressed the other, in the language of fond recollection used by Helena to Hermia

"Is all the counsel that we two have shared,

The sister's vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty footed time
For parting us-oh, now, is all forgot!
All schooldays' friendship, childhood innocence ?
We, Ilermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart,
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry

Due but to one, and crowned with one crest."

But whatever were the secret sympathies and the hidden attractions -whatever the unseen, and to themselves unknown bonds of attachment which held them together-nature certainly never formed two creatures less alike in all those visible qualities of mind and character by which they were distinguished. Jane had such an exuberant flow of animal spirits, that it was the most amusing thing imaginable to see her seriously endeavouring to be serious. Her mirth was never broad or coarse; it had nothing of the hoyden or the romp in it; but it was a kind of constitutional vivacity, an inexhaustible spring of salient gaiety, which flashed incessantly in sparkling radiance from her eyes, or burst in frolic humour from her lips. Every day she lived, she shed tears; but it was because ten times in every day she laughed till they came; and so cloudless had been her sunshine hitherto, that they were almost the only tears she could recollect she ever did shed. This perpetual summer of the mind imparted a corresponding glow and animation to her manner, a freshness and genial warmth to all her actions, which made her presence the signal for merry looks and cheerful discourse. Her nimble and elastic step, as she entered a room, was nearly as irresistible an invitation to stand up for a quadrille as the sound of a fiddle; while the contagious smile that ever played about her mouth, seemed to say, "Come, good folks, let us laugh at a world that only laughs at us!" And then her own laugh!—it was a clear, hearty, chuckling laugh-there was such a breadth of hilarity spread over all her features, dimpling her smooth vermillion cheeks, and glistening in her liquid eyes, that, without saying a word, it never failed to provoke a chorus of giggling, (no matter how miscellaneous the company,) from the asthmatic wheezing of seventy, down to the shrill carolling of seven.

Agnes Fitzroy, on the contrary, though no foe to

"Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,"

had with her a chastening spirit of pensive sobriety, which kept her from ever rising to the same height of impetuous gaiety as her cousin. The risible faculty was not so strong in her, neither was the perception of the really ludicrous, or the disposition to convert into the ludicrous, words and actions which were fairly

amenable to that fallacious test. Her passions were calm and deep, and when most agitated, betraying least evidence on their ruffled surface of what was passing beneath. It was no superior self-command that imparted this character to her feelings; still less was it any thing approaching to the mastery of refined artifice which made her looks a mask for her thoughts. It proceeded entirely from an excessive sensibility of disposition-a shrinking within herself, as if she feared, whether in trouble or in joy, to find no second self, no other human heart that could give her back her smiles, or receive her tears, in that spirit which had called them forth. What we should pronounce reserve in the cold, and caution in the cunning, was in her an almost morbid delicacy, an ingenuous timidity, which hesitated to disturb the serenity of others, by imparting its own particular grief. Perhaps, too, there was a little alloy, a slight mixture of pride in this feelingthat stern pride of silent sorrow, which is so apt to frown upon the weakness of seeking pity, and to soorn it when proffered. Yet were there any art by which what passed within could be read in looks and actions -if it were really possible to interpret the very language of a smothered sigh, a gathering tear, or a restless manner-if these outward denotements of a perturbed spirit could ever be construed with fidelity, and be made to express what they only indicate, poor Agnes might as well have proclaimed with her tongue, at once, what the secret workings of her heart proclaimed without it. For though it was true that her passions were deep and calm, and that, when most agitated, they least betrayed on their ruffled surface the swift and vexed under-current, still the havoc they made could not always be concealed.

Jane, who had been her inseparable companion for so many years, had gradually acquired a tolerably quick and accurate perception of her character, and could draw shrewd conclusions from sufficiently slight circumstances. But her sagacity was sometimes at fault; and it had never been more so, than when, in her usual strain of joyous raillery, she pretended to trace the flight of her cousin's "heigho!" towards the parish church, and to catechise her fingers for lingering so fondly amid the harp-strings upon that plaintive air of Mehul's. That exclamation was breathed by Agnes, at the close of a silent meditation upon a subject which is very apt-yes, very apt indeed-to intrude itself, by moonlight, upon young ladies of eighteen. I am thus particular in mentioning the age, because I have never been able to discover the precise period when a lady herself allows she is not young; and, as I happen to entertain some rather heterodox notions touching youth and age in the fair sex. I wish it to be distinctly understood, that I do consider every lady young who cannot either write or tell her age without employing the teen. Farther than this deponent sayeth not.

And what was that subject? And why did the meditation of Agnes end in such a terribly long and sentimental heigh-o, as Jane described it? And why were they both afraid to discuss it in a more sober strain? And why, though they shared a common fear, was that fear without a common origin?

Jane was beginning to fear that she never should fall in love; that is, she was afraid no "nice handsome fellow" would grow as thin as a winter weasel

She

for her sake, and so give her a decent excuse for. taking pity upon him. And a great pity she thought it. knew herself to be naturally of a compassionate disposition; she felt that amiable quality grow stronger and stronger within her, every month; and she longed so vehemently for any opportunity of displaying it, that she was fast becoming a confirmed philanthropist. She had even begun to consider very seriously what could be the reason why love-making should always commence with the other sex, and had lately started the problem to an old batchelor, who visited the family, and who had already passed his grand climacteric. The question was popped so suddenly, that at first the old gentleman was posed; but gradually recovering from the shock, he replied very gravely, "I'll tell you, Miss Jane, wooing is but an affectionate seeking. Now, we seek not for that which we have, but for that which we have not. It is more proper, therefore, for the man, in this love-search, to seek for what he has lost, than for the woman to seek for what she already has. The man, you know, has lost his rib, and he seeks after her that has it; whereas it would be folly in her to seek it, because she has it. And that, Miss Jane, is a good and sufficient reason why women woo not, but are wooed."-"I wonder who has got your rib," said Jane, laughing. "You have never been able to find her out, it seems. And some of you men must have had three or four of your ribs stolen; or else, I suppose, when you marry three or four wives, you seek after other folk's ribs."—"Never mind my rib," replied the old gentleman; and then slily added, "but take care that you, yourself, are not like the man who had liberty given him to go through a wood, and make choice of the best staff he could find, provided he chose one in his going on, and not in his returning."

"What did he do?" enquired Jane, not at all aware of what was to follow. "Why," continued my batchelor, "he walked along, and with a curious eye observed where he might best suit himself; he saw many that were tall, and straight, and good-looking, and well adapted for his purpose; but no; these would not content him; so on he goes, still expecting better, till at last he came to the end of the wood, and then he found none hut crooked and ill-looking ones to choose from; and no great choice of them either.""I know which end of wood you grow at," said Jane, tossing her head. From that moment, however, she considered herself in a wood, and was terribly afraid lest she should not be able to suit herself among the tall, straight, good-looking trees; but vowing, at the same time, that if she did get to the other end, she would never choose one of the crooked walking sticks. Yet, as she had a very laudable dread of dying an old maid; and, as the love she bargained for in her own mind, was a good, homely, every-day sort of love,—a love that would stand wear and tear, and not get out of fashion too soon,-she did not absolutely despair of finding such a commodity, though she was almost twenty.

Such were the meditations, the doubts, and the misgivings of the light-hearted Jane; but not such were the meditations, or the doubts, or the misgivings, of her fair cousin. Agnes feared lest she should love; or rather, lest she should love too soon, and be doomed to experience that utter wretchedness of loving, not wisely" at first, but "too well" afterwards. She

66

had proved, and she had sometimes shrunk with dismay from the proof, that she was more susceptible of those impressions which are akin to love, than might be compatible with her future happiness; and those very "symptoms" upon which Jane had so sportively rallied her, were to herself the source of many bitter for bodings. "Yes!" she would often mentally exclaim, "it is too true; I have thought myself in love, and I have thought how blest my condition might become, if while the dream lasted my hand could have followed my heart. But a few short months dispelled the dream; and then, alas! I have only thought how miserable must have been my lot, if my hand had followed my heart!" It was the dread of such a fate as this that haunted her; the dread that in some similar dream, some trance of passion, some fancied devotion of her soul, she should approach the altar, and awaken, aftewards, to the tremendous knowledge, that a cold sense of duty was all that remained of the glowing vision. These were no idle self-tormentings; for she needed but to remember what had been, to add what might have been, and the dark picture was at once completed! There had been moments, when she believed the passion-which some hearts ever feel, and which no human heart ever felt twice-was roused, and she only knew it was not, because its resemblance had died before herself.

At other times she was pursued by fancies, which, though but fancies, had a possible, perhaps a prophetic, reality for her! Might she not love, and her own sad heart be at once her love's cradle and its tomb ?-like an unseen flower and blossoms in the wilderness, exhales its perfume, then fades and dies! Even as such a flower might love rear itself in the solitude of her own heart, called forth without her will, and drooping to decay in its own withering soil! It is no wonder, therefore, that poor Agnes dwelt sometimes with a melancholy foreboding upon the subject; and she had just burst the fetters of one of those gloomy musings when her merry cousin gave so false an interpretation to the "heigho!" with which it terminated.

numerous

Agnes Fitzroy was the youngest of a family, all of whom had survived their father, a general officer, of distinguished character, who fell at the Battle of Waterloo. Two of his sons had embraced the same profession; a third was in the navy, and the eldest had acquired some celebrity as a diplomatist. She had five sisters, who were all married, but only two of them resided in England. Agnes lived with her mother at their family seat in Gloucestershire, within a short distance of Malvern, and commanding an extensive view of that beautiful scenery, including a part of Herefordshire, which stretches from the base of the lofty ridge of the Malvern hills.

Jane Douglas, who was a niece of Mrs. Fitzroy's, had been brought up by her from her infancy. Her father, a private gentleman, of good property, when she was only two years old, had sacrificed his valuable life in deference to that monstrous absurdity which requires that a man should stand to be shot at before he can honourably acknowledge he is in the wrong. A hasty word, uttered in the warmth of a casual altercation with a total stranger, led to an immediate meeting, and Mr. Douglas, receiving his adversary's fire, fell dead upon the spot. The dreadful tidings were incautiously committed to his widow, who was then in

She doated upon

In

the seventh month of her pregnancy. her husband, and the shock was too much for her. less than three days, after she had given birth to a dead-born child, she was herself a corpse under the same roof with her youthful husband; and one funeral ceremony consigned them, with their untimely offspring, to their graves. Such were the melancholy fruitssuch the scene of mourning and desolation, resulting from that false principle of modern honour, which washes out with blood an offence extracted from a moody brow, or tortured out of an ambiguous word!

Mrs. Fitzroy took the infant Jane to her own home, educated her with her own children, and tenderly supplied all the maternal offices which her sister would have discharged, had she been living. Though the bulk of her father's property went to his male kindred, as he died intestate, they generously relinquished such a portion as enabled them to make a more than adequate settlement upon her; and, as Mrs. Fitzroy religiously abstained from appropriating any part of it towards the expenses of her maintenance and education, it had had gone on accumulating for nearly twenty years, till now Jane Douglas might almost call herself an heiress. Assuredly, it had grown to an amplitude which, if a mere fortune-hunter would have sufficed, was an abundant security against her dying of that dreadful complaint, old-maidism.

Separated as Mrs Fitzroy was from the rest of her children, Agnes had grown up in her affections with much of that exclusive love, and of that singleness of attachment, which twine themselves so closely round an only child. To her, indeed, she had long been as an only child; for though scarcely a week elapsed which did not bring dutiful and affectionate remembrances for her absent sons and daughters, and though the two which resided in England never failed to pass some portion of every summer with her, still they had each become the centre of a little circle of domestic ties, of sympathies, and duties of their own, and no longer dwelt, as it were, within that of which she was herself the centre. They were themselves fathers and mothers; they had taken their appointed stations in the great march of human life; and whatever fond recollections might linger round the home from which they had begun their journey, they necessarily grew fainter and fainter, as the distance increased, and as they mingled with the widening stream of social and individual charities. But, in exact proportion as the tide of maternal solicitude, in the heart of Mrs. Fitzroy, had narrowed its channel, and contracted its course, its fertilizing waters flowed with an augmenting volume towards Agnes; till now, when she was ripening into womanhood, and the gentle qualities of her naturally amiable and susceptible character were unfolding themselves, she had become the constant companion, the only friend, and the favourite daughter of her mother. Jane, perhaps, divided with her the first; was second in the second; but in the third, though Mrs. Fitzroy loved her with a fondness that might be called parental; yet, when some passing cloud of sickness dimmed the lustre of Jane's eye, and when it sat in ominous shadows upon the melting azure of those of her own dear Agnes, nature, faithful to her holiest yearnings, quickly informed her which was the child of her blood, and which of her adoption.

Among the neighbouring gentry, whose seats were

near that of Mrs. Fitzroy, and whose estates encircled, as it were, her litle domestic paradise, of some fifty or sixty acres, was the family of Sir Frederick Trehearn, with whom a very intimate acquaintance had been kept up since her husband's death. Sir Frederick was a widower, and, for a time, it was positively settled by all the match-making gossips in the county, that Mrs. Fitzroy would certainly appear as Lady Trehearn at the next triennial music-meeting. But that next trien. nial music-meeting came; and another; and still there was no Lady Trehearn; a circumstance which was wholly inexplicable, for the vicar's wife knew, from the very best authority, that the wedding dresses were ordered, and the. Hon. Mrs. Tittletattle had joked the baronet upon his approaching happy change of condition, at which he only laughed! This was pronounced a decisive proof of "malice propense" on the part of Sir Frederick; and when coupled with the suspicious fact, that the best bedroom at Trehearn Lodge had been newly papered and painted, what further circumstantial evidence could be reasonably required? Now it was certainly true, that the worthy baronet had been guilty of these two alleged crimes, in so far as related to the best bedroom, and laughing at the Hon. Mrs. Tittletattle's joke; but the most serious part of charge, that of ordering the wedding dresses, resting, as it did, upon the unsupported testimony of that notoriously lying witness "best authority," turned out, of course, mere fabrication. Still it was generally acknowledged by all persons, except the two who were most competent to judge of it, that it would be a nice match; for the gentleman was not too old, and the lady was not too young." I hate mentioning ages, after people get beyond that uncertain time of life which is called a "certain age;" so I shall compromise the matter, by giving the sum total of both their sexes, leaving it, as it may chance, to the sagacity or gallantry of my reader, to adjust the difference in such proportions as may warrant the aforesaid declaration, that the " genleman was not too old, nor the lady too young." Sir Frederick, then, was exactly ; Mrs. Fitzroy within three months of -; which, by the simple rule of addition, will be found to give the joint-stock amount of ninety-three, throwing in the lady's quarter of a year.

Sir Frederick Trehearn had two sons, George and Edward; and one daughter, Emily. Edward was the elder, and of course heir to the title and estate. George was a miserable cripple, in consequence of an accident which befell him in his infancy. Of Emily, every thing is told, when it is said she was not ugly, and not short; not ill-natured, and not stupid! not too fat, and not too pale; not too talkative, and not too grave. To complete her native character, however, it must be added, she was not the affirmative of any of these negatives. In fact, she was one of those girls of which a million are made according to pattern every year; and which it would hardly be fair to consider as the workmanship of "Nature's journeymen" even, but rather of her apprentices; while the mould in which she was cast, must certainly have been in use ever since Adam and Eve were driven out of Paradise. There is no more marked difference between one of these twolegged human machines, and the mob of others, than there is between one white-heart cabbage and another, or between half-a-dozen blue-and-white tea cups, belonging to the same set.

Edward Trehearn, the "young squire," as he was usually denominated, was in his twentieth year, had been educated at Eton and Oxford, and bade fair to reflect honour upon both those eminent seats of learning. At Eton he had risen to the distinguished rank of "Captain," and received his forced tribute of "salt" at the Montem; while at Oxford he had contended successfully for some of the highest academical prizes. To what specific purpose his natural endowments and scholastic attainments were to be applied-what his future course was to be—were, as yet, left to the future. There had been some talk about his standing for the representation of the county at the next general election, and promises of support had been spontaneously tendered which would almost justify the experiment; but his father was too wise and prudent a man to impoverish the family estate by squandering eight or ten thousand pounds, even for the certainty, still less for the chance, of his son's return at a contested elec tion. Otherwise, he was not insensible to the honour of again seeing a Trehearn in Parliament, which had not been the case for nearly fifty years, when the grandfather of Edward, Sir Theophilus Trehearn, ruptured a blood vessel by the vehemence with which he vociferated "No!" upon the question being put from the chair, for the second reading of the famous East India bill.

In the close intimacy which, as has been mentioned, subsisted between the families at Trehearn Lodge and Fitzroy Cottage, (as the elegant residence of Mrs. Fitzroy was modestly designated,) Edward, of course, became a frequent visitor at the latter; while, somehow or other, it always happened that he was at home whenever the Fitzroys were known to be coming to the Lodge. It was soon settled, therefore, hy those who had made the match between Sir Frederick and Mrs. Fitzroy, that one would certainly take place between Edward, and either Agnes or Jane. But it would have perplexed the most expert interpreter of amorous hieroglyphics to decide whether Edward cared for either Jane or Agnes, so impartially were his attentions bestowed upon both. He was, indeed, the frequent companion of their walks and rides in summer; would read to them in the long dreary evenings of winter; and sometimes take his part in a duet, or accompany them with his flute, (which he played with an expression and brilliancy of execution, worthy almost of Drouet or Nicholson,) while they exerted their own skill and science alternately upon the harp and piano-forte. Occasionally, too, he might be detected in a tête-à tête, at one time with Jane, at another with Agnes, either in the drawing-room or upon the lawn, or sauntering through the grove of quivering poplars, whose trembling leaves chequered their path with dancing moonbeams. It happened, however, that these latter walks were more frequent with Agnes than with Jane, not because they were sought or contrived, but simply because Agnes was more prone to seek such quiet rambles than her mercurial cousin. Edward, with all his book. knowledge, was but a tyro in self-knowledge. He would have discovered else, and soon enough to save a pang, which he was every way too manly and too honourable to appropriate as a triumph, that he was heedlessly strewing with roses the beginning of a path whose end was the grave.

Time glided on, and month after month saw Edward