"But if girls dont know what's good for them, why they must be gently taught, you know."

"Certainly, muster Linton; and when shall we start, eh?" inquired the rascal, coolly.

"Stay, I'll just make some little enquiries, and let you know," said Joseph Linton, hurrying away. He returned presently, rubbing his hands, and smiling all over his over-fed countenance, as he cried out

"There never was such luck in this world; the coast's clear, my lord. I find that the young jackanapes who has for some time past been dangling after Dinah, has just set off for Herefordshire on very urgent business; if you can get all your arrangements made by to-morrow night, she is yours!"

"To-morrow night," echoed his lordship; " why not set off this instant ?"

"No! no!" we must wait until to-morrow, "said Joseph, smiling at the other's impatience, "The poor little girl would scarcely be such a flat as to set off with you at such a time as this, and besides, Harry here must make his preparations— you must have relays all down the road for some way from town, to distance pursuit, if any should occur, although, who there is that would care to follow you, when master Mordaunt is out of the way, beats my comprehension. By the by, that valet of yours seems a trusty dog! couldn't you set him forward to prepare the cattle?"

"A capital idea.

I'll despatch him in an instant; there is nothing more we can do to-night, is there?" and he rose to go.

"No, no," rejoined Joseph Linton, thoughtfully. "I shall see you in the morning, probably."

"You may depend upon that. Au revoir!" and with a shake of the hand his lordship departed.

Joseph and his ally, however, did not part so early, for they sat in very eager debate until long after midnight, quaffing bumpers of port to the success of their unnatural scheme. They laughed very often, and very loudly too, and as their mirth was always in concert, it is to be presumed that some very merry topic occupied their minds; and as both Walter Mordaunt's name was very frequently mentioned, as well as that of Joseph Linton's future son-in-law, it is to be presumed that one or the other of those gentlemen formed the subject of their merriment.

The clock of a neighbouring church struck two, as Mr. Joseph Linton was winding his watch up with praiseworthy patience. He counted the strokes; they were not very many, or he would scarcely have been able to keep count, and then, with another long yawn, tumbled into bed, and soon fell asleep.

He had a very ugly dream, notwithstanding all the magnifi

cent visions that had floated through his brain for the last few hours, consequent upon Lord Cavendish's determination to run away with his daughter, for he dreamed that he was standing on the very verge of a dizzy cliff with a stormy sea howling beneath, and that some unseen hand all at once pushed him over and he fell toppling from cliff to cliff, snatching in his agony at every tuft of grass or rocky fissure, until at length he fell into the sea and sunk down, down, down, hundreds of fathoms, the boiling waves seething and hissing around him; and at that moment he awoke with an oddsensation of pain in his head, and found it was a dream.

And yet for all that, he felt not a whit more comfortable now that he was awake than he had done asleep. That dull, gnawing, never-ending pain, which seemed to deaden every faculty within him, haunted him long after the dream and its hideous fantasies were forgotten.

He got up, wretchedly ill, and yet eagerly determined to carry out the scheme they had planned overnight, notwithstanding his serious indisposition.

Dinah was sitting near the window, engaged with some needlework when he entered the room, and her first glance showed him that she had detected his illness. She had long since ceased to exhibit any tenderness towards him, even if she felt it, but which, however, with such a being, I could never imagine to be her case. "I have had a rather bad night, Dinah," he said, in a husky tone, "but in fact I always look worse than I really am."

"You look very ill," she said, in a clear calm voice, but without looking up from her employment.

"Illor well, that shan't prevent our going to the opera to-night, my dear," he said, making a desperate plunge into the business at once. "It was a very stupid thing the last time we were there; you must tell that woman of yours to get you ready; but as w are not going to the boxes, you can just put on a dark dress, d go as you are now."

"I think you will scarcely be in a condition to go, sir," she said, now looking fixedly at him. "You really look very ill." "A mere bagatelle !" said Joseph Linton, attempting to laugh, "it will wear off before night; though, to confess the truth, we were indulging rather freely overnight, and I'm paying the penalty this morning, but that shan't prevent my giving my little girl a treat, and so you must be ready, mind, at the usual time."

There was a miserable mockery in all this that deceived neither father nor daughter. Both understood their connection. too well to believe that Mr. Linton would so far inconvenience himself as to take Dinah to any place of amusement, if it did not suit his own purposes. As it was, however, she did not make any objection; and Mr. Linton, feigning business, soon after withDecember, 1848.-VOL. LIII.-NO. CCXII.

K K

drew, to keep his appointment with Lord Cavendish at the house of the latter.

All the way as he walked up Piccadilly and so on, until he came out upon the Park, that dull dead pain lay upon him, with a weight like that of death, and yet so subtile and indefinite that once when he leaned up against a railing, and attempted to analyse it, he could not do so for the life of him, nor determine where it had its origin or seat. It was there, however, now running up one side and paralyzing every muscle and limb, and presently pressing like lead upon his brain, until it became so blind and stupified as neither to see nor feel those against whom he stumbled, and who thought him either drunk or mad, and so he went on, with death upon his heart, to hurry his daughter to perdition.

His confederate, with all the selfishness of his age and class, neither saw nor noticed the ghastly pallor of his countenance; he thought him singularly slow and stupid; but set all this down to a widely different cause, and even permitted himself to wonder once or twice why his worthy father-in-law hesitated and pondered so much in conversation; it was lucky for them both that all the arrangments had been made overnight, and were in fact all executed ere this, as far as they could be, or the affair might have fallen through after all. And so they parted to meet by appointment again at eight o clock.

From that time until the evening the pain he endured, terrible as it was, was almost forgotten in his anxiety lest this precious scheme, on which all his hopes of sustaining the false position he assumed in society rested, should prove abortive; and great was his terror lest any untoward circumstance should arise to peril its success. Nothing of the kind, however, occurred, and it was evident that fate seemed to have given up Dinah to her evil destiny.

At eight-o-clock, then, a close carriage, with a single pair of horses, stood at Joseph Linton's door, and within a minute after it drew up, Joseph Linton descended to his drawing-room to join his daughter. To deaden the pain of the strange complaint. that was rioting upon his frame, he had drunk deeply, but not so much so as to stupify him, and his manner, false and specious as it was, seemed to poor Dinah more than usually kind and affectionate, as he drew her shawl around her graceful shoulders, and imprinted a kiss upon her forehead. It was not the first time in the world's history that a kiss has sealed a deed of the blackest treachery.

As they went down the stairs, Dinah felt him leaning heavily upon her for support, and terrified beyond measure she ventured to look into his face. It was as pallid and ghastly as that of a corpse, and now thoroughly alarmed, she had the hardihood to press him to defer their visit to the opera to a future day.

"No! no, girl, I shall be better directly," he said, sternly, dragging her on. "Come, come, the carriage is waiting all this time, and I must teach you to conquer these silly fears."

"But you look so ill, sir-You are so ill," she said, daringly. "Curse your folly, girl, cannot I judge best of my feelings?" cried Joseph Linton, who would have gone on now had Death himself stood in his path, "once and for all, for the time to come never you dare to govern me, Dinah," and with a rough jerk, that brought the tears to her eyes, he gained the hall.

"Sit well into the corner," he said, pushing her into the carriage; "wait, I will and join you in a moment," and he went back into the house, whilst Dinah, whose heart was bursting, sate with her veil down far back in her own corner, scarcely able to refrain from tears.

Presently a footman came with a message.

"Master is

very sorry, but he finds you will have to go on by yourself, and he will either overtake you, or be waiting for you at the entrance to the lobby, ma'am," and the man shut the door, and ordered the coachman to drive on.

Joseph Linton in the meantime, with an effort that almost drove all the blood back to his brain, walked up to his dressing room, and ringing the bell, ordered the footman to run immediately to Chester Square for his usual physician. After the man had gone, he had still strength sufficient between the paroxysms of pain that now wrung his frame, to drag off his clothes, which he threw all in a heap on the floor, and then rolled into bed, perfectly powerless and incapable, although still sensible, overturning the candle he had been using off the chair he had placed it upon, and then, driving his daughter entirely from his mind, and praying only for the arrival of the physician, between whose coming and the departure of the footman an age seemed already to have elapsed.

Presently a dull, dead, crackling sound was heard. Powerless as he was, his senses were painfully acute, and as he heard it a thrill of terror shot through his frame. He attempted to raise himself up, but he was as weak and powerless as an infant. Louder, and fiercer, and stronger grew the sound, and presently the darkness that had come over the room was transformed into a broad lurid light, apparently issuing from the bed on which he lay.

He raved, he shouted, he cursed, he groaned and prayed in turns, but all was of no avail. The louder he screamed, the fiercer burned the flames, and the brighter grew the light beneath him. Then a dense smoke curled up, and spread itself gradually over the ceiling. He tried to raise his hand to the bell rope, but could not stir, and although his limbs writhed and tossed beneath him, he could not move one inch from the place he lay upon, and which now seemed destined for his tomb.

Suddenly a forked gleam of light burst overhead, and to his intense horror he saw that the flames had at last reached the curtains of the bed, and were mounting up to the gorgeous canopy overhead. Still the fire, although it burned surely, burned but slowly, and even yet he did not abandon the hope of escaping with his life. The rich heavy furniture of the bed was not made of the most inflammable material, and then he began to watch with all the agony of a drowning wretch, or worse than even that, the flame as it glided like a serpent with its folds of light up, up the poles, until the deep fringe overhead was reached.

Then the frightful element leaped like some mad thing from pole to pole; then the rods splintered, and the dead, dull, hissing sound deepened into a roar; then the unhappy man, doomed to the most horrible and the most lingering of deaths, felt the heat grow more and more intense beneath him, as he shrieked out in his delirious terror for some one to snatch him from his impending fate, then in a lucid moment, as the flames stretched out their forked tongues and hissed at him, as they hemmed him in, in their fearful circle of fire, the recollection of Dinah riding to her perdition came over him, and he uttered curses and imprecations that would have terrified the most abandoned profligate; but the flames grew hotter and brighter as the circle grew smaller, until the flame touched his feet, and then nature, unable longer to sustain its fearful burden, broke down, and he sank insensible upon the burning mass, which, as if it had waited only until he had thus yielded to assert its mastery, rushed in and enveloped the still writhing but insensible form in its murderous embraces.

Then there came the hurried tread of many feet, and voices in every alternation of alarm and fear were heard upon the stairs without; the foremost of them burst open the door, and then recoiled back with horror as the flames rushed forth; crying out that the house was on fire, and that the alarm must be given at once or it would be too late; and through all this the fire continued to burn with a terrible ardour of its own, spreading from beam and joist, running down silken tapestries, belching out a lurid mass of flame at every window, until it gained the roof, which after a momentary pause falling in, scattered an immense shower of sparks high up into the midnight sky.

Then men and women gathering in the cold wet street below, filling every blind lane and fetid alley, stood in knots, wondering and speculating on the cause of the raree-show they were witnessing, blocking up, in their eagerness to hear and see all, the road down which the engines with four or six horses apiece were endeavouring to force their way, and amidst all this the fire like some wild thing blazed up, until the night-sky glowed with its lurid light, and Joseph Linton, unwept and unhonoured, perished amidst the household gods he had desecrated.