frail and erring as mine has been, could offer! And yet, in other dreams, I have painted, to what firmness might that frailty be encouragedwhat altitudes that erringness he steadied in! But, no more! My own blindness may have appropriated what it is your gentle nature to bestow on many. Farewell! 'twere profitless to retard me. Yet I'd hear your voice again—once! and all's over!"

She paused, notwithstanding, a space-may-be to summon resolution that was never so put to the test before. And oh, but her flushes went and came thereon, with a will! just most like the firtish fits of sunny April's self!

"I would inquire, then," said she, "has there been prior claim on your affections ?"

A brilliancy flashed from his eyes—as though her tones were lightnings, and had run them through; and his frame trembled—as though they were hot at work within.

He could discern, he thought, what the reply involved; and vacillated; but Truth was great, and bore the bell !*

The Compiler takes considerable credit to himself, (in this age of universal pretension,) for the above novel paraphrase of that outworn apophthegm, “Magna est veritas,

Though it ruin me, I'll not deal falsely. Yes, Miss Evrett, long since, I loved-how intensely, but my own spirit can attest! a fruitless love though, which Childhood sowed in sunshine, and Boyhood had to reap in storms-which brought forth no return. But hold!" he cried, "there's more: I'd unbosom all; you shall not impeach me of deception. Blighted there, another harvest promised recompence, and I mistook, for love itself, a viler produce. There!" his aspect veiled in both palms, "you have it! I know my doom! But I would not, for even the dear sake of yourself, act the hypocrite, and hide now what might afterwards draw out displeasure or distrust. This ends it. I feel your scorn. No love of mine's worth

دو

"Worth the world to me!" enthusiastically burst from her, "for its open honorableness!"

And, though she said no more, surely the arm stretched towards him, and the face soul-kindling, without a breath beyond-ay, without even that so-spontaneously-buoyant exclamation itselfwould have over-satisfied, into the very delirium of satiety, the most ravenous !

etc." which, he begs leave to state, is strictly interpolation, and entirely his own.

Now, I that is to say, the Compiler (mark clearly not the hero, nor his cater-cousin either!) of these absorbing papers (albeit not so absorbing yet, as untractable Fact destines anon to be)propose indulging my present bent in several eccentric summersets, for my own personal refreshment, preluding them with a strong poetic fly.

And therefore I request it to be understood, that the stars sent-down their tranquil radiance upon Man's millioned orb; and the west-wind sped in furtive hush across the wide, nationcarpeted dormitory of Earth's Mother, the slumbering Night; without beholding or meeting, in their mingled race of light and motion, two happier hearts than those beside that windowand beside themselves!

In Grace was visible, just between the darkfringed, downcast lid, and the glowing cheek, one glittering drop, that Maiden-Fortitude seemed difficultly to interdict from escape.

And on this was Villiers gazing, in mixt timidity and transport, such as might move the epicure who had realised the most exquisite morsel extant, but knew it to have been acquired by theft! And was saying: "My soul's life!

should I have lost a Paradise, as surely as I've found one, on your darling lips-I could not but have risked it!"

And, true; there was a mimic Eden about them; but, like the primœval, not secured against the Fiend.

Summerset ! One, two, three !—oh, rare! bravo! capital! crash through Shetly's shrubberies! Three ! two! one- hallo! who's this?

That night at that hour-Harry Morley was beneath that window.

No. 6.-Disclosures.

Speak!

YOUNG.-The Brother

Now, it is a thing to be noted, as illustrative of tendency to involuntary unstableness, that Villiers 80 overslept himself, as to discover, not alone the impracticability of reaching Clevedon for break

fast, but the table at Shetly garnished for that fundamental meal; during which Harry Morley so affected the sedate, that he might have supplied subject to Sketchers-from-life for Cantab at honor. exam. wrapt into the deciding problem : Evrett was again taciturn; Grace had a something of timorousness; and Villiers dropt suddenly into the uttermost meditation.

For, in brief, Miss Evrett, with palpable view of Morley, brought to heightened perception (what, in the night's adventurousness, he had wholly overlooked) his declarations to a woman already engaged. It did not lessen the dereliction, this engagement having been intimated under semblance of amity. He had been urged beyond himself, and now the recoil came with re-action :—to have surreptitiously played supplantor! Grace's conduct, certainly, was in contradiction with his rival's statement; for Villiers could not, by any known process of ratiocination, conceive that she, whose very life-strings took their vitality from that uprightness "which felt a stain as a wound," should permit even her affections to subvert this high-built principle;

nor, indeed, that her father, who to the same structure superadded sternness, should have