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see the woman I loved agitated by her love for me, I had rather see her tremble, shudder even at my presence, than look as if Mr. Manby had come into the room."

"What a detestable lover you would make!" exclaimed Mrs. Ernsley. "Always, by your own admission, on the verge of hatred."

He laughed, and said, "It is an old saying, that love and hatred are closely allied."

"Not more so than hatred and contempt," I said; “and in incurring the one, one might, perhaps, gain the other."

Both my companions looked at me with surprise, for I had not joined before in their conversation, and a secret feeling (I was aware of it) had given a shade of bitterness to my manner of saying it.

Mrs. Ernsley seemed to take the remark as personal to herself; but said good-humouredly, though somewhat sneeringly, "Since Miss Middleton has pronounced so decided an opinion, we had better drop the subject. What is become of Edward Middleton, Mr. Lovell?"

"He has been abroad for some months," replied Henry; and Sir Edmund Ardern, who at that moment joined us, said, "The last time I saw him was at Naples last February; we had just made an excursion into the mountains of Calabria together."

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"A very unromantic one, no doubt," said Mrs. Ernsley, as everything is in our unromantic days. Not a trace of a brigand or of an adventure I suppose?"

"None that we were concerned in. But we saw an exbrigand, and he told us his adventures.'

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"Did he really?" exclaimed Miss Farnley; "and was he not adorable?"

"Not exactly," said Sir Edmund with a smile; "but some of his accounts were interesting."

"Was he fierce?"

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'No, not the least. I fancy he had followed that line in his younger days, more because his father and his brother were brigands, than from any inclination of his own. One of the

stories he told us struck Middleton and myself in a very different manner."

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"What was it?" I asked, unable to restrain my anxious curiosity.

"I am afraid you may think it long," said Sir Edmund; "but if you are to decide the point in question you must have patience to hear the story:

"Lorenzo, that was our friend's name, had been engaged in several skirmishes with the gendarmerie, that had been sent into the mountains to arrest the gang to which he belonged; he was known by sight, and had once or twice narrowly escaped being seized. He had a personal enemy among the gendarmes a man called Giacomo, whose jealousy he had excited some years previously at a country fair. They had quarrelled about a girl whom both were making love to. Lorenzo had struck him, and Giacomo had not returned the blow before they were separated, and his rival safe in the mountains beyond the reach of his vengeance. He brooded over this recollection for several years; and when he found himself, at last, officially in pursuit of his enemy, he followed him as a hungry beast tracks his prey. One evening, with two or three of his men, he had dodged him for several hours. Lorenzo had made with incredible speed for a spot where, between the fissures of the rock, he knew of a secret passage by which he could elude the pursuit, and place himself in safety. He strained every nerve to turn the corner before his pursuers could be upon him, and mark the place where he disappeared. Between him and that corner, there was now nothing left but a slight wooden bridge thrown over a precipice. As he was rushing across it, Giacomo, with the instinctive feeling that his enemy was escaping him, by one tremendous leap from the top of the rock which overhung the bridge, reached it at the same moment. The shock broke to pieces the frail support; the hand-rail alone did not give way, and to this, by their hands alone, the two men clung. They were close to each other they looked into each other's faces neither could move. Lorenzo's eyes were glazed with

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terror; Giacomo's glared with fury; he was nearest the edge, his men were in sight, and he called to them hoarsely. Lorenzo gave himself up for lost. At that moment, above their heads, on the edge of the rock, something moved both looked up. A blow, a tremendous blow, fell on Giacomo's head; his features grew distorted, they quivered in agony a yell of torture escaped him: another blow, and his brains flew upon the face and hands of his foe. A mist seemed to cover Lorenzo's eyes; but he felt something stretched out to him he clung to it instinctively, he scrambled, he darted into the cavern, he fainted, but he was safe."

"And who had saved him?" we all exclaimed.

“Amina, a girl whom he was courting, and by whom he was beloved. She was carrying home to her father a large sledge-hammer which he had lent to a neighbour. Passing alone through that wild region, she saw the desperate situation of the two men, recognised her lover struggling with the gendarme, heard the shouts of the latter to his comrades, and rushed to the spot."

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"A brave girl," exclaimed Henry.

"How did the romance end?" asked Mrs. Ernsley.

"Ah! there's the point," said Sir Edmund. "I asked Lorenzo if he did not love the girl twice as much since her gallant conduct. 'I was very grateful to her,' he answered, 'but I was no longer in love with her.' I exclaimed in astonishment, but he persisted; it was very odd certainly, she had saved his life, and he would have done anything to serve her; 'But you know, gentlemen,' he added, 'one cannot help being in love, or not being in love; and when I looked at Amina's black eyes, I could not help shuddering, for I remembered the look they had, when she gave Giacomo that last blow, and it was not pleasant, and in short I could not be in love with her, and there was an end of it."

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"And is it possible," exclaimed Mrs. Ernsley, "that he was so ungrateful as to forsake her?"

"No; he told me he would have married her, if she had wished it, but she did not; 'Perhaps,' he said, 'she saw I

was no longer in love with her; but she did not seem to care much, and there was an end of it,' as he said before. Now I own I cannot understand the fellow's feeling; if anybody had saved my life, as Amina saved his, I really believe I should have fallen in love with her, had she been old and ugly; but a handsome girl, whom he was in love with before, that she should lose his heart, in consequence of the very act for which he should have adored her, passes, I confess, my comprehension. But Edward Middleton disagreed with me; he thought it perfectly natural. 'It was hard upon her,' he said, 'and could no be defended on the ground of reason; but there were instincts, impulses, more powerful than reason itself; and unjust and cruel as it might seem, he could not wonder at the change in Lorenzo's feelings.'

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"How strange!" said Henry Lovell; "how like Edward, too; though not quite so moral and just, as he generally piques himself upon being."

"Ay," said Sir Edmund, "I must do him the justice to say, that he added, 'Had I been Lorenzo, I should have felt myself bound to devote my life to Amina, to have made her happy at the expense of my own happiness; but there is, to me, something so dreadful in life destroyed, in death dealt by the hand of a woman, under any circumstances whatever.""

As Sir Edmund was saying these last words, I felt the sick faint sensation that had been coming over me during the last few minutes, suddenly increase, and he was interrupted by Mrs. Ernsley exclaiming, "Good Heavens, Miss Middleton, how pale you look! are you ill?"

Mrs. Brandon, who heard her, rushed to me; by a strong effort, I recovered myself, swallowed the glass of water she brought, and walked to the piano-forte, where Rosa Moore was singing.

I laid my head on the corner of the instrument, and as my tears fell fast, I breathed more freely. When, later, Sir Edmund apologised to me for having made me ill with his horrid story, and Henry whispered to me, "Mrs. Ernsley has just

announced that you are of the same species as Miss Farnley, who cannot hear of death, or of wounds, without swoooing, but that you are only a somewhat better actress," I was able to smile, and speak gaily. Soon after, I went to bed; as I undressed, I thought of these lines of Scott:

"O many a shaft at random sent,

Finds mark the archer little meant

And many a word, at random spoken,

May soothe or wound a heart nigh broken."

That night I had little sleep, and when I woke in the morning, my pillow was still wet with tears.

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THE following day was Sunday, and some of us drove, some of us walked, to the village church. It was about two miles distant from the house by the carriage road, but the path that led thither by a short cut across the park, through a small wood, down a steep hill, and up another still steeper, and then by a gentle descent into the village, was not much more than a mile in length. It was a beautiful walk, and the view from the top of that last hill was enough to repay the fatigue of scrambling up that winding path, exposed to the burning heat of the sun, and that is not saying a little. As the last bell had not begun to ring, we sat down on the stile on the brow of the hill, to wait for it, and in the meantime I looked with delight on the picture before my eyes. The little footpath wound down through the daisy-enamelled grass to the edge of a pond of clear water, that lay between the field and the road, and was shaded by half a dozen magnifi

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