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terrupt your cousin, but let him finish the account of our neighbours.

Helen made no reply, and the gentleman had the prudence to continue his descriptions without a reference to the rebuke. "For fear of wearying you, I will dismiss the rest of this family in a more summary way. My next portrait shall be his lordship's daughter; one, who under other circumstances, might have been thought by some plain Miss Alford, but now stands both as the fashionable and handsome Lady Catherine Alford. You shall have Mr. Delton's description of her, as I wish to be impartial: She is stylish, clever, piquante, would go to the right if ordered to the left; expects flattery, yet half despises it; a warm but indiscreet fiiend; a bitter but imprudent enemy; and a cool and skilful player with dangerous weapons-the fabled tomb of Mahomet suspended between earth and heaven.' Her mother is almost all that woman should be, only deserving blame for marrying such a bore as his lordship, and for having had too delicate health to control her children.-From Marston Hall let us proceed to Woodbine Cottage, which you must picture to yourself a square bright red brick house, over which the fair and romantic, or to use her own expressions, the delicately nerved and exqui. sitely sensitive Susan Jones has endeavoured for the last nine months to solicit the tender tendrils of the fantastic woodbine to throw its shadow and its perfumed veil.' You must imagine this being of a higher sphere, fat, fair, and fubsy, resting her glowing cheek upon her ungloved hand, and chiding her fidgetty mother, that gossip Mrs. Jones,' for teasing her for the key of the tea-chest, and thus disturbing the delicious reverie, awakened by the tender beaming of the star of eve and dewy mist of twilight. I am no extravagant limner, I assure you, though you look incredulous; but the dewy mist of twilight has long since passed away I see, and I am keeping you from your repose after your journey. Farewell!

6

To each, to both, a fair good night,

And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light."

"Stay, I charge you, at a lady's bidding. In another hour the moon will be up, and you are scarcely prudent enough to ride in the dark alone; or rather, rest here to night, and you shall ramble with me to-morrow through my native woods."

"A thousand thanks! Are you indeed so anxious for my safety, my own dear Helen, faulty as I am ?" and he pressed her hand, whilst his looks said even more than his words." "We may wish a brother to be perfect, and yet love him

as he is; not for his faults, but despite them ;" and she withdrew her hand coldly, and then added gaily, "besides, some of my lands are held on your life, and my steward says I must begin to be thrifty."

"You are too kind; but, I have an appointment, and must return."

"At least take my horse and groom; Bayard is too wild for the dark."

"You give yourself too much trouble for one so hateful, Miss St. Maur. I ride on Bayard, and on no other, and require no attendance. Should an accident happen, my will is in your favour, and I have learnt no lessons of thrift."

"Good night! since it must be so."

He snatched her hand as she turned away displeased, and the tear that stood in her eye calmed him instantly.

"Forgive me, Helen! I have been vexed and irritated, and am not myself to-day. You shake your head; well then, I will be myself no more, but you shall make me what you will. My own groom is here, and I will ride quietly, and come to-morrow, and show you I am safe. Are you con

tented ?"

"More than contented. Once more good night, and remember you dine and sleep here to-morrow. I have a hun. dred things to consult you about, and a thousand to tell you, and will hope to have the happiness to see you all I could wish."

66

Really, Helen," said Mrs. Hargrave, looking very stately, as soon as the door had closed on their visitor, "I cannot at all approve of your conduct towards Mr. Euston. You seem the only person blind to his virtues."

"You wrong my affection for hirn, dear aunt; I am fully sensible of all his virtues, or I should not be so anxious lest he allow his faults to overpower them."

"In my time young ladies did not think it decorous to reprove young gentlemen for that for which their elders had allowed them to pass unreproved: but old customs are changed now it seems. I saw no harm in what your cousin said of Lord Alford, or I should have checked him. And, had strangers been present, they might have attributed your remark to strange motives."

"Alford is too kind to be given up to Robert's jealousy. To defend myself from your open charges, dear aunt, would be useless, as I should still remain wrong in your eyes. Allow me therefore to plead guilty to the crime, of which, in your heart, you accuse me. My affection for my cousin is

the warm, open, sincere affection of a sister, and it never can, and, with my will, it never shall partake of another character. He understood me perfectly when we parted at Hastings: why his opinion and conduct have changed since then, perhaps you can tell, as he may have explained his reasons to you in his letter of last month, or his interview of this evening. I am perfectly innocent of such a change, and deeply regret it. No true friend will encourage hopes which can never be realized, but will join with me in persuading him to follow some profession. To urge him on this point was one of my principal reasons for asking him here to-morrow, as well as to show by my open conduct, that we could never be more than relations. You will, I am sure, see with me the propri ety of such an active mind engaging in some pursuit; and I hope, ere his visit to us shall have ended, our united persuasions will have induced him to decide on becoming 'tinker, tailor, sailor, apothecary, plough-boy, or thief,' as the nurses say. Now, aunt, having finished my disquisition, I trust to the satisfaction of both, let me assist you up the slippery oak staircase."

Either the allusion to the letter and the interview was too home a stroke to be parried, or the playful smile with which she offered her arm was too sweet to be resisted; for the old lady said no more, but kissed her and took her arm.

CHAPTER II.

Yet, e'en in yon sequester'd spot,
May worthier conquest be thy lot,
Than yet thy life has known:
Conquest, unbought by blood or harm,
That needs nor foreign aid, nor arm,
A triumph all thine own.

Such waits thee, when thou shalt control
Those passions wild-that stubborn soul-
That mars thy prosperous scene.

Hear this from no unmoved heart;

Which sighs, comparing what thou art
With what thou might'st have been.

SCOTT.

Je préfère, sans hésiter, l'âne qui porte sa charge, au lion qui dévore les hommes.

"WHAT a gad-about! you are, my gentle cousin," said Robert Euston, as he handed Miss St. Maur from her little

pony carriage the next day about one. "Not at home twentyfour hours, before you start on a round of visits, and cheat me out of my ramble with you. I have been waiting for you these two hours."

"Your watch goes by steam, I calculate, thou most impertinent of cousins! You were not here at half-past twelve, and I shall be ready in ten minutes. Could I have imagined you so changed as to wish to visit Suky Watts and Jenny Jenkins, I would have waited for you."

"Thanks, gentle lady! But I hate morning visits, and neither admire dirty children nor smoky huts."

"No, you never had much taste for the picturesque."

Has any

"How well and happy you are looking, Helen," said her aunt, or rather great-aunt, for such she was. thing very delightful occurred this morning?" "Yes, a great many things."

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"Pray let us hear some of these delightful things.' "Hear them? Impossible! They are things to be felt, not told. The whole of the village was in an ecstacy at the sight of me. The women curtsied, laughed and cried; the children shouted; the curs barked and wagged their tails; and the very cats purred with delight. Nay, I even fancied the woods looked greener for my presence; and the waterfall greeted me with a softened murmur. They who say the poor are ungrateful wrong them, unless they exempt Hurlestone from the general censure. In short, Robert, I wanted you there to describe the scene, as you did the delicate-nerved Miss Jones last night."

"Did I describe Woodbine Cottage other than it was ?"

"I believe not; but I could not bestow on it the observa. tion it deserved, for a blue-eyed damsel was sitting at an open window below, breathing the balmy air of morn; whilst a pair of twinkling grey eyes, that seemed as if they could see what was, and what was not, surmounted by a cap of novel form, were peeping over the blind at the window above."

"The mother and the daughter! Before the hour of five the former will have tramped over half the country, describ. ing the heiress, and boasting of having had the first sight. So tremble, lady fair! and the latter will have looked you out a lover, and woven the romance of your future fate."

"Are you sure she is not too busily engaged in weaving the web of fate for herself to think of me ?"

"Why should you imagine it: has she already been whis. pering a tale of love into your sympathising ear?"

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"No! but I saw her watching a stranger, who, in manners and appearance, might figure as the hero of a romance." "Whom do you mean?" inquired Mr. Euston rather hastily.

"That is more than I can tell; but Bran seems to have taken a dislike to him, and as he quieted my refractory pony, and insisted on his passing the stream at the end of the village, even I felt there was something rather awful and sublime about him."

"Impertinent fellow! I'll teach him to interfere," muttered Mr. Euston.

"Great impertinence, certainly, most gallant cousin! to assist a lady in distress. The sex will thank you, if you instruct all impertinent strangers, that ladies prefer being overturned in the mud, or drowned in a brook, to having to say, 'Thank you,' for a service done, lest it should chance to displease a moody cousin."

He felt the rebuke, though playfully conveyed, but was

little inclined to submit to it.

"You seem to rate his services somewhat highly. Hurle. stone brook would scarcely drown, and a slight accident might teach you in future to take some one with you."

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"One thousand and one thanks for wishing me a slight accident, and know James had left my pony's side but an instant before to deliver a message. But as my preserver seems no favourite of yours, let us talk no more about him."

"Some strolling player, who enacts Othello in a barn, and stabs Desdemona to the heart with his own hand; some scrawler of rhymes fawning for a subscription; or some destroyer of the human face divine; or dauber of landscapes with red and yellow skies, rich green fields, and bright blue lakes, booing for an order. And to call such a creature your preserver! Miss Jones herself could not say more of him. I suppose he must be fêted at the Park to convince him of your eternal gratitude. Pray let me know his name and abode, that I may-"

"Instruct him in playing the part of Othello? or assist him in writing a sonnet on good temper?" asked she archly. He coloured, and the cloud on his brow became heavier. She was sorry to see it, as she had hoped her hint to Mrs. Hargrave would have induced that lady to retract any encouragement she might have given before; and that his promise of the preceding night would not be broken so speedily. Both were silent, till Helen said,

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