he said, "Mr. Lovell has been very often to inquire after you, ma'am, and he begs to know if he can see you now; or if he shall call again this afternoon."

I would have given worlds to have admitted Henry, to have poured forth in words the burning anger of my soul, or implored a release from my fatal oath; but Edward's command was before my eyes; his letter was in my hand; and I said, in as calm a voice as I could command, "Tell Mr. Lovell that I am engaged now, and that I shall not be at home this afternoon." I glanced at the letter on the table, and saw that it was not from Henry, but from Mrs. Moore, who, with a thousand regrets and apologies for having been suddenly obliged to leave home for the sea-side, put her villa at my disposal, and hoped I would stay there as long as might suit me. This opened a new source of embarrassment to me. I could not resolve with myself whether to accept this offer, or to refuse it. If Henry was determined to force his visits upon me, I felt that I should be more unprotected at Hampstead, less able to exclude him there than in town, and yet I was afraid that Edward should suppose I was not prepared in every thing to follow his directions. I determined at last to write to him that Mrs. Moore had left Hampstead, and that I should therefore remain in town till I heard from him again, or till the blessed moment of his return. As I looked over my letter I seized the pen and scratched out that word blessed, which he would have branded with hypocrisy. Never did a letter of a few lines cost such painful labor or such anxious thought as that I sent to Edward in return for his. Many and many a foul copy I wrote, in which protestations and prayers, self-accusations and passionate justifications, succeeded each other with frantic vehemence; but as I read over these bursts of feeling, these impassioned appeals, I tore them up and gave them to the flames; for to disobey him now, was to endanger the frail tenure by which I clung to him, and, as he had said himself, to drive him from me; and yet to accept the conditions of pardon, to submit humbly to the terms held out to me, was a tacit admission of the truth of his accusations and of the justice of my condemnation.

At one moment I resolved to brave his anger; boldly and earnestly to declare to him my innocence, not from crime only, but from a feeling or a thought inconsistent with the truest and most ardent affection that ever woman felt, or man in

spired; and, in defiance of his orders, but in the strictest integrity of heart, to seek Henry, and by prayers, by reproaches, by upbraidings, by all the power which a strong will, and the consciousness of his unconquerable passion for me, could give, to obtain from him a release from my oath, and liberty to kneel at Edward's feet, and to clasp his knees, with a confession of every sin, but that of not loving him.

But then, again, I shrank from the rash efforts, from the fatal risks, which this plan involved, and it seemed to me best to submit in humble resignation to his will; to accept his mistaken severity, his coldness, and his scorn, as a just expiation for a course of sin and deceit; and to trust that, in a life spent by his side, in compliance with his will, in submission to his dictates, in absolute devotion, and unremitting tenderness, which my lips would never express, but which my conduct would reveal, I should at last have my reward—his belief in that love which could bear, believe, endure, and hope all things.

Tossed by these conflicting thoughts, jaded by this incessant and racking anxiety, at last I sent a few lines which I had copied out several times-for sometimes a word had seemed to me too cold, or too abrupt, too like, or too unlike those which were struggling to escape from my heart and from my pen, or else my tears had stained the paper.

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In conclusion, I said, If, on his dying bed, my uncle names me, do not ask him to say God bless her!' but God forgive her.'"

I also wrote to Mrs. Middleton, and when these two letters were gone, I felt relieved.

The state in which I lived during the next few days was strange. In the midst of London I was in perfect solitude. Rather than forbid the servants to let Henry in, I gave a general order to deny me to every one, without exception.

Early in the morning, I drove into the country for some hours, and the rest of the day I spent in my back drawingroom buried in thought, and alternately giving way to the gloomiest anticipations, or the most vague and groundless visions of future happiness.

Every day I sent a servant to inquire after Alice; and the report of her continued to be favorable.

On the third day after Edward's departure, and after Henry had several fruitless attempts to see me, a letter was

brought to me, and I immediately felt it was from him. My first impulse was to seize a cover and enclose it back to him, without a word of explanation; but, on cooler reflection, I determined to write to him.

Edward had not forbidden me to do so; and to explain my present conduct was the only chance of keeping up that power over him, on which so much depended. I therefore wrote as follows:

"The crisis of my fate is come. Henceforward, if I take one more step in the downward course in which I have been so cruelly entangled, I am lost forever. If you feel any of that regard for me which you have so long professed, I need not make any comments upon the fact which I now disclose to you.

"The notes which at different times I have sent you, and which so fatally misrepresent our relative positions, have been sent to Edward; and this letter, of which I enclose you a copy, is the result. I will not attempt to make you understand what I have suffered-what I suffer. I dare not see you; I dare not receive a letter from you; and yet, before Edward's return, I must; for there is an oath which you once imposed upon me, which must be cancelled-you must absolve me from it, if you do not wish to drive me to despair -to perjury on the one hand, or to a life of hopeless misery on the other.

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Henry! you who have been my best friend and my worst enemy, have pity upon me. Do not condemn me to fresh remorse-to further struggles-to eternal hypocrisy. Do not write to me any sophistry on this subject; do not try to blind my eyes again; to deceive me to my ruin. If you have the cruelty to steel yourself against my prayers, against my earnest supplications, then leave me to myself; and take with you the consciousness that you have filled up the measure of your iniquities, and heaped upon my head all the miseries which the most savage hatred could devise.

"Would to God that I could find words to touch you! Would to God that I could reach your heart! and carry to it the conviction, that you would be happier yourself by giving way to my entreaties, than by maintaining a tyranny which is as criminal as it is cruel.

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"By all that you hold sacred, hear me, Henry! In the name of your sister-in the name of your child-hear me!

As

you would not bring misery upon them, hear me! My whole soul is in this prayer-the fate of my whole life is in its issuehave mercy upon me, as you ever hope for mercy yourself.

"Yours,

"ELLEN MIDDLETON."

This was my letter, and day by day I watched and trembled each time that the sound of the bell or a knock at the door roused a hope that its answer might come. During that period I received two short and hurried letters from Edward, dated from the towns where he stopped for an hour or two on his way to Hyéres. The solitude of my life became at last intolerable; I began to feel an impetuous desire to change something in the course of my days; to see some one, to speak to some one, and yet I shrunk from the sight of a common acquaintance, or of a commonplace friend. At last, one morning, a note was brought to me, but the direction was written, not by Henry, but by Alice. It only contained these words :—

"I wish to see you, and I beg of you to come to me.

66 Yours,

66 'ALICE LOVELL."

I knew not whether Mrs. Tracy was gone-I knew not whether I should see Henry-I was in total ignorance of what this visit might produce: but it was a relief to do something— to change something in the order of my day; and as Edward had not forbidden me to visit Alice, I felt justified in going to her, and prepared to do so. As I arrived at her door and walked up stairs to her, for the first time I felt a sensation of bodily weakness, which gave me a sudden apprehension that my physical strength was giving way under such protracted mental suffering. The door was opened, and I found Alice alone. As I looked at her I felt one of the severest pangs I had ever yet experienced. Never in my life had I seen anybody so altered. There was not a single speck of color in her cheek; her eyes looked unnaturally large, and the black under them was deeply marked. She came to meet me, but did not offer to kiss me; she held out her thin pale hand; and, slightly pressing mine, made me sit down by her. She inquired about Mr. Middleton; and after I had answered her questions, there

was a pause, which I broke by saying, in a trembling voice, "How is your child, Alice? May I not see him?"

She opened the door of the next room and showed me the cradle. The child was asleep, and as I gazed upon it the tears which I struggled to repress almost choked me. He is beautiful," I said.

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Yes, he is beautiful," she murmured, as she knelt down by the cradle. “He is beautiful, but he does not thrive; he is not strong. She took the tiny hand and pressed it to her pale lips; and then she rose, and we returned to the drawing-room. "How you must love him, Alice!" I said, with a sigh.

"I do," she answered; and then she put her hand to her forehead, and a sudden flush overspread her face, her brow, her neck. Her breathing was quick; and she added, in a voice of intense emotion, "But if you think I do not love his father, you are mistaken.'

"Alice, I never said-I never thought—"

"Oh yes you did, and you were right to think so; for when I married him I loved him as a child, not as a woman loves; but real love and real sorrow came in time, and strength and courage are come with them. Ellen, I love him; and I charge you not to stand between him and me. I suppose I am doing a strange thing now, but it seems to me right. I have none to help me, none to counsel me but my own heart, and the sorrow which has long been secretly buried within it. I married, and the world before me was a blank, but a blank in which the spirit of God seemed to me to move as it did in the beginning of time, on the face of the waters. All was outside then in my life; inside, in my brain, in my heart, there was nothing but peace and joy-joy that the sky was bright, and the earth gay with flowers in the summer, and white with pure snow in the winter. I learned what life and love are in the books Henry gave me. I felt what they were the first time I saw him with you. I shut the books—I shut my eyes-I was a coward—I was afraid of my own heart-afraid of the life I saw before me, till strength was given me to encounter it. I saw that mine was Leah's and not Rachel's portion, and I prayed for grace not to shrink from my cup of sorrow. I do not shrink from it now; but, for Henry's sake, for the sake of my child, I must struggle with you and with your strange power, and God will be with me, Ellen, for you seek to put asunder what he has joined together."