the door he did indeed truly realize Mr. Deputy Dick's sanguine expectations, and bestowed a gratuity in the shape of half a suverin. There was something of imaged mockery, something tantalizing to a mind in Inglis's condition, when, as he entered the lodge gates of the Elleringay domain, his melancholy glance beheld the rampant lions, with their elevated tails and savage physiognomies, symbolling the pride and power of his house, whose motto was Nobilis est ira leonis! and when he passed beneath that huge Tudor portico, his heart beat quicker, and be felt as if a tornado were about to sweep over his luxurious home. Again the still small voice within whispered of the ruinous deeds from the scenes of which he had flown away-but, alas! whose effects must inevitably track his footsteps there. Scarcely had he paced across that ample and gloomy hall ere Letitia, in all the innocent naturalness of her warm and forgiving heart, accosted him in the accents of welcoming affection. "James, my love," exclaimed she, "we anxiously looked for you three days ago. You seem ill, my darling, is it so?" "Yes, my dearest Tishy, I feel fagged and unwell;" at the same time did the prodigal husband, with a most unwonted sincerity, press one whom he now so bitterly remembered to have wronged and behaved unkindly to-press the partner of his lot to his bosom, and plant on her faithful lips a repentant kiss. His tongue trembled as he spoke, and a tear came into his eye, but the former she noticed not, and the latter was unseen in the ill-lighted and gloomy entrance of that antique dwelling. "We have dined two hours ago—what can you take, my dear, and I will give orders for your repast directly?" "Nothing at present, Tishy-nothing yet awhile." Having put on a change of clothes, and made himself somewhat more comfortable after his journey, he descended into the dining-room, where Letitia had again taken her seat at her embroidery frame, and where Squire Clynchiere was pondering over a huge volume of Coke upon Littleton, and whose abstractedness seemed to illustrate the verity of the aphorism, "Quid est jucundius quam doctrina." He welcomed his son-in-law in cordial terms, regretted to see him so worn and dispirited, and as James eat his dinner the Squire made a number of inquiries relative to the progress of affairs at the metropolis. CHAPTER. III. "For what Rail you against me? what is my offence ?" Two or three weeks passed away, but Inglis was dejected and haggard still. He complained of illness, and doubtless felt so. Gideon became anxious, and Letitia's kind sympathies more and more awakened towards the inexplicable condition of her husband. He ate little, slept badly, and his feverish, startling dreams created within her a sickening fear, which she could neither dispel nor dared to reveal. There is a season of the year when the soul seems to hold communion with inanimate objects of nature--when it feels a kind of resuscitating, pleasure-inspiring emotion, full of hope and the future-when the long frozen earth, and that temporal deathliness which are in a resurrectional revivification, assuming the first symptoms of awakening life when the bud swells, and the tender blossom breaks forth-when the first vernal flowers peep from the more congenial soil, -when the wild dove coos amorously to its gentle mate-when "the gladdened valleys ring" with feathered song-when the glorious sun returns in power as the great restorer of life and renovation, and pours his fitful flood of golden warmth upon the world -'tis then that the Spark divine in human mould experiences some of those emotions of joyousnesss which all around him are assuming for it is spring! The umbrageous shades in the vicinage of Elleringay, were every day breaking into broader and broader leafage. That valley-stream which in the previous heavy rain and plashy thaws, had been thick and muddy as the turbid yellow waves of Zuyder Zee, had again become pellucid |