as she pronounced the words she watched what effect the title might have on Miss Aveley.

No effect, perceptible. But her next words had they were, "Gracious! Hester, did you ever see such a likeness? They might be brother and sister!" And her eyes turned from Harriet to the marquis, and from him to her again. She could not help coloring at this ill-bred familiarity.

His lordship unaffectedly protested that Miss Downes paid him much too high a compliment. Hester commenced some persiflage, insisting politely that the compliment was not too great. "But," she added, "I really do see something like a likeness between you and Miss Aveley. And, talking of likenesses, Miss Aveley, where are all the pictures you had hung round this room? Shall you not leave any of them?"

Harriet answered that her books, pictures, and some articles of bed-room furniture, she intended keeping; everything else which the house contained was to be sold.

The marquis had been struck by her person; he was charmed by her voice and words. They formed indeed a pleasant contrast to the ear-piercing vehemence of the two ladies who were present. Whilst they ran on with all sorts of enquiries, and frequently repeated the important one, "When would the cottage be given up?" he remained standing, musing abstractedly. At length, a pause, and a movement to depart roused him. He turned to Harriet, and after apologising for his intrusion, at which the Misses Downes stared in amazement, he said, "It is very singular how familiar your name is to me-I have been asking myself how it is, and I now recollect that I have seen it written in some books in my library, Greek and Latin ones they are-Charles Aveley is the name written in them."

"My father's name," she replied, "he may have sold some of his books."

He saw that her eyes filled with tears, and understanding at once the cause of her

mourning dress, he renewed his apologies and by a very determined "good morning," forced the Misses Downes to take leave.

He was too polite to allow them, having accompanied them so far, to finish their walk without his escort, although he felt inclined to do so. But his continuing to be their companion, his listening to their prattle about the person whose cottage they were to have, and there certainly being at the first glance a resemblance between his lordship and her, did not lead him into the impolicy of betraying that his thoughts were wholly fixed on the person. He only parried the remarks about the likeness by saying that it was very flattering at his years to be compared in looks to a lady of Miss Aveley's age.

"She is eight and twenty, I should think," said Miss Hester, "and that is your lordship's age, is it not?"

"Thank you, thank you, for so kindly a judgment of me-but alas!-wretch that I

am, it is too surely to be read that I am thirty-eight!"—and with a tragic-comic exhibition of horror, he bade the fair pedestrians adieu, declaring that after such a confession he dared not remain near them.

He was glad to have done with society, now wearisome; and they were glad not to be accompanied by him to the parsonage. That abode being doomed to the annoyance hinted at by the Italian satirist, la tumultuante famiglia, was not so elegant as Miss Aveley's, and sounds by no means so sweet as the accents of her voice were generally to be heard in it.

Ah, Harriet's cottage! It had been such an abode of peace as Boccaccio describes. "the villa," the humble country dwelling. Wisdom, worth, the charities, the graces, the refinements of life were sheltered by its roof, And, all this was at an end.

"No," said Harriet in reply to herself, when looking around on her preparations for becoming the inmate of another dwelling

than that in which she had been so happy, she thus questioned herself "All this at an end?-No!-the things of the spirit do not die-my father's influence over my soul is an abiding influence. As it cannot be the will of God that I should be cast out from my fellow-beings, I may in some degree influence others for good, and in that good, father's spirit live."

will my

He for God only, she for God in him. Had Milton given this beautiful, loving, trusting character of woman, as that of a daughter in relation to a father, how exquisite should we have thought it! How fully adapted to lead her to a higher Father for support in the after circumstances of life!-Had he given it thus, it would have been truly applicable to Harriet Aveley. Yet Mr. Aveley in his teachings, had always been free from the selfish desire to be the exclusive object of her regard.

If the spirits of the dead should be permitted to behold the result of every honest