seen him for some hours I was impatient to see him, and speak to him again, in order to prove to myself that I liked him; but with Edward it was not so. Alas! would it not have been for me the most dreadful misfortune to have loved him? Was not there, as Henry had said, a gulf between us, which could never be filled up? Would he not have shrunk from my love as from a poisonous thing, and have recoiled from the touch of my hand as from a serpent's sting?

Tears gathered in my eyes at this thought; I felt them tremble on my eyelashes, and brushed them hastily aside as I walked into the dining-room with my uncle. Edward talked of his travels, of various persons whom he had made acquaintance with in France and in Italy, of English politics, and the approaching session. There was nothing in his conversation peculiarly adapted to my taste; and yet I listened to each word that fell from his lips with an interest which my own feelings stimulated to the highest pitch.

In the evening he asked me to sing to him, and as he leant his head on his hand, and sat in silence by my side, listening to song after song which he had known and liked. in former days, I felt my heart grow fuller, till at last my voice failed, and in its place a choking sob rose in my throat. He raised his head abruptly and looked at me sternly. 'It is only that I am a little nervous,' I said; 'I have taken a long ride, and being tired—————'

‘Oh, pray make no explanations,' he replied; 'excuses are perfectly unnecessary;' and he suddenly left the pianoforte.

He spoke to me no more that evening, but the next day he treated me again as he had done at first, and even seemed in some ways more satisfied with me than he had ever been before.

I have never yet described Edward, and I do not think I could describe him. He was always unlike anybody else,

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and yet it would have been difficult to point out any peculiarity in him. It was not only truth, it was reality, that marked his character. He never was, never could be, anything but himself; and, like all perfectly true characters, could not even understand those that were not so, and judged them too severely or too leniently, from the impossibility of putting himself in their place. His manner was always calm; even emotion in him never partook of the semblance of agitation. Where others were angry he was stern; a few simple words from him always carried with them a strength of condemnation, which crushed under its weight any attempt to resist it. From a child I had been afraid of Edward, and he had never perfectly understood my character; now that I had so much reason to fear him, in some ways I felt more at my ease with him, because, as I had ceased to express all my feelings and pour forth my thoughts before him, I dreaded less the severity of his judgment.

During the next two or three weeks that he was at Elmsley, I felt in his presence as a criminal before his judge; his sternness was justice, his kindness was mercy; and in the softened tones of his voice, and in the tenderness of his eyes, I only read the tacit grant of a pardon which mine mutely implored. This gave to my whole manner to my disposition I might almost say-for the time, a humility, a submission which were in no wise affected, but which did not naturally belong to my character. Edward's was despotic as well as uncompromising; perfectly conscientious himself, strict in the discharge of every duty, he exacted from others what he performed himself. allowed of no excuses, of no subterfuges, and ranked the weakness that shrinks from suffering in the accomplishment of what is right in the same line as that which yields to the allurements of pleasure or the temptations of guilt. In

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many respects he resembled my uncle, but still the difference between them was perceptibly great. Edward's feelings were stronger; it was impossible to observe the depths of thought manifested in his eyes and in his pale high forehead; to hear the sound of his voice when he addressed those he loved; to see the colour rise slowly in his cheek as he spoke of some act of virtue, of heroism, or of self-conquest, without the conviction that powers of heart and mind, not an atom of which were frittered away in vain words and empty fancies, were at work within him.

Once he spoke to me of Henry's marriage, and told me he had seen him in London. They had met accidentally in the street, and he had offered to go and call on his wife; but Henry had made some excuse or other, and the visit had not taken place. He did not add one word regarding Henry's conduct, or what view he had taken of it himself, but looked earnestly into my face, as if he expected me to speak first on the subject; but seeing I was silent, at last he said: 'Ellen, was this marriage a disappointment to you?'

'It was a relief to me.'

'How so?'

'Because I had deceived Henry, and almost deceived myself into the belief that I liked him; and his marriage proved to me how much I had been mistaken.’

Edward took my hand and kissed it; I drew it away with great emotion, and exclaimed: 'Good God, don't you know what you are doing?'

He did not say another word, and left me abruptly.

For two days afterwards he spoke to me but little, and when he did so his manner was cold.

One day that we were taking a walk together in the park, after one or two insignificant observations had passed between us, Edward asked me if I had ever received the

book which he had left for me the year before. As usual I had it in my pocket; I took it out and gave it to him without making any other answer. He opened it and turned the pages over as we walked along.

'Now is the time come,' I said to myself; 'now!' and the blood forsook my heart, and my legs seemed to fail under me.

In a moment of morbid irritation I had written on the blank page of the book the words which had remained coupled in my mind with this gift of Edward's—' Beware ; I know your secret!' and now they were before his eyes, and now he was reading them, and now the explanation was at hand, and all that I had suffered before was as nothing compared to what I had wilfully brought on myself.

He turned to me and said with a smile, 'What do those mysterious words mean?'

I felt as if I was dreaming, but as if in my dream a mountain had been removed from my breast. I laughed hysterically and said they meant nothing. That was the first time I lied to Edward.

He said that I must have read the book attentively, for he saw that it was marked in different places; he had never marked a book in his life; it was a thing that never occurred to him to do. And then he gave it back to me; and it felt to me as if the air had grown lighter, and the sky bluer, and as if my feet sprang as by magic from the ground they trod on.

When that evening I was with Edward again, I looked up into his face and talked to him as I had not talked to him for nearly two years; I laughed gaily as in days of old; I saw with exultation that he laughed too, and that he asked Mrs. Middleton to play at chess with my uncle instead of him, and that he did not leave my side till the last moment that I remained in the drawing-room; and I

was foolishly, wickedly happy, till I went up to my room. and laid my head on my pillow; then came in all its bitterness the remembrance that, although he might not know my secret, another did; that if indeed he loved me, as I now thought he did (for I remembered that letter to Henry, which I had so long misunderstood, and now recognised its true meaning),—if indeed he loved me, I must, I ought, to tell him the truth; and then he would despise me, he would hate me, not only for the deed itself, but for my long silence, for my cowardly concealment. No; I had suffered so dreadfully during those minutes when I had felt myself on the brink of unavoidable confession, that, happen what might, I would not—I could not-disclose to him the truth. But should I then marry him? Should I inherit my uncle's fortune? Should I become one day the mistress of Elmsley? and from the midst of all that this world can give of joy, look, as Belshazzar looked on the handwriting on the wall, on the torrent where my own hand had hurled Mrs. Middleton's child, Edward's cousin; and one day, perhaps, be denounced, betrayed, exposed, by Henry Lovell, whose words began that night to be realised: 'With every throb of love for another there will be in your heart a pang of fear, a shudder of terror, a thought of me?'

Hour after hour I tossed about my bed, unable to close my eyes in sleep; at times, in spite of everything, feeling wildly happy; at others forming the most solemn resolutions that neither the weakness of my own heart nor the persecutions of others should induce me to think even of marrying Edward, and yet unable to conceal from myself that the next time I saw him, the next time my eyes met his, they would betray to him all that long-subdued and unconfessed love which had now grown into a passion astonishing to myself, and ruled my undisciplined mind beyond all power of restraint and control.