skilled in the art of making a woman understand that he admired her, whilst yet he never committed himself by aught that could attract another's attention, or, if repeated, could be brought in evidence against him. He played this against the blooming attendant of his cousin, solely to find out the extent of her lady's confidence in her, and the nature of that confidence. It imported him to know by whose agency his cousin had made her discoveries of his perfidy and secret link with the popish party. Susannah, however, was too rightminded for such artifice to work its purpose: she disdained him for his admiration, aware that it ought to be her lady's right, if he were sincere as a suitor; and she showed this so strongly by her manner, that his pride became too much irritated for a continuance of smooth professions, and offers of promoting her brother in his regiment, provided she wished her brother such exaltation.

Mr. Becket, too, baffled him by the simple operation of praying off his honouring notice; declaring, that after Miss Trevanion's grievous accusation of him, the secretary, when he merely obeyed the co

lonel's desire, and showed her the letter writ to him from the camp, it had been his chief study to stear clear of such suspicion in future, by making intimate with no one under his venerated master's roof; therefore, as his humble object was to live in peace, intermeddling with no one's concerns, he trusted the noble colonel would pardon him for relinquishing all private discourse with him, though but on matters indifferent.

Dunbar had pretty well satisfied himself of Becket's exclusion from his fair cousin's councils, but he was not quite sure that the smooth-phrased secretary had no secrets of his own. In such stirring times as those they lived in, when place and profit were the rewards of active agency in the service of the church of Rome, it appeared impossible to such a man as Dunbar that any popish scholar should really be contented with so drowsy a state as mediocrity of station and an uneventful existence; and resolving still to keep his eye upon him, he took his gun and went out with the intent of joining a party of sportsmen on the moors.

As he was trampling through the fern of a patch of waste close to the cottage of

Hollis's mother, he stayed his progress to catch the last sentences of a speech, addressed by the dame to pretty Mrs. Damaris, as they were parting.

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Prithee, dontee fail, good Mrs. Flavel,' were the words, "to give my bounden thanks to your worshipful lady for her great offers; but we maunt think o'em. I hope to live and die on his honour's land, who gave us a home here when we had not so much as a byre of our own to sleep in; so no more speech of the matter, except my dutiful thanks and my poor useless girl's yonder — -and my son's, when he comes to hear of it. Oh, Mrs. Damaris, I fear me it will be a sore temptation to him, thinking of you- as I tell him, doesn't become such on a one as him, poor boy!- however, God will give him grace, I hope, to over-master it." And with that simple expression of plain Christian fidelity, content to give up every worldly advantage which must be gained by acting ungratefully, Dame Hollis courteously opened her little wicket, standing until the courtesying and sighing Mrs. Damaris issued from the thick shade of hazels in which it was bedded.

Dunbar Trevanion held back while these

courtesies were exchanging; but no sooner was Damaris on her way homeward, than leaping a fence on one side, he cut across a slip of ploughed ground, which brought him immediately in front of her advance.

It was not the first time Mrs. Damaris had seen Colonel Trevanion since her fearful dialogue with him under old Cary's roof; but it was the first on which she had met him alone: and at sight of his wellmade person and handsome face, although he saluted her with a smiling waving of his feathered hat, she recoiled in dismay.

An instant only was required for such an adroit general as Dunbar, to settle his plan of attack. To have made love to one so silly and vain as he fairly judged poor Damaris to be, from her yet unconquered passion for finery, would subject him to inconvenient suspicion, or scandal in consequence of her probable boasts, and might attract to him no very lucky notice from her admirer Hollis. He determined, therefore, once more to work upon her fears; and with this view challenged her acquaintance, by hoping that none of her friends had suffered from the severities exercising against the principals and abettors of the late rebellion.

Damaris, with the face of a sheeted ghost, inarticularly replied in the negative; then bursting into tears as she looked hastily all round, with more convulsion of voice begged to know if the papers his honour knew of, were really all burned? for she dreamt of them almost every night; and was sure she had seen the apparition of the poor gentleman that gave them to her, and heard him ask her why she had not taken them to the person he had named? She wished she could get those papers out of the flames, for she began to think she should never be happy again all her life long, for not having kept her promise.

Alarmed at her distempered manner-for in truth, terror, whenever she thought of the subject, nearly turned poor Damaris's brain - Dunbar employed his best arts of poignant raillery, to appease her conscience, and persuade her that an unreasonable ghost was no more to be treated with complaisance, than a living impertinent; and that, consequently, the shade of Lord Gray de Wark could not expect attention to his most ungallant complaints. With better assumed gravity, he added to this lightness, that knowing herself to have acted like a good