she owned a secret partiality for being comforted and consoled. When she had proceeded half-way over the bridge, she suddenly stopped and exclaimed:

"Positively, I cannot, I dare not, stir a step further, Sir Frederick! it is fearful! Look at that water boiling and foaming beneath us."

"Yes, it is a very fine sight indeed. I don't wonder at your being spell-bound. Only let Lady Ida and Miss Dernevor pass, and I will wait patiently until your enthusiastic wonder, which I quite admire, has expended itself."

Nonsense, Sir Frederick! I really must return—it is terrible! I shall grow giddy

and fall over the balustrade."

"I advise you not, for if you do, you

VOL. II.

E

will inevitably be lost; for even I, brave as I am, won't undertake to seek you in that bubbling abyss, that may be, for aught I know, an entrance to the halls of His Infernal Majesty. So let us proceed at once; for if you turn back, you will have just as far to go, since we are precisely over the middle of the roaring river, besides having, I regret to say, to encounter the peril alone; for being the chosen protector of the whole party, I dare not, of course, desert the majority."

Miss Lydia did not again advert to her fears.

On the other side of the river, the ground again rose in a range of low eminences, tastefully planted and laid out in walks, with here and there a rustic seat, elfin grot,

or bowery temple arched with evergreens, to invite the wanderer to rest awhile where the views were surpassingly fine. Magnificent indeed were the prospects obtained from these sylvan stations-of the ocean, an evervarying picture of beauty and sublimity—of the estuary, and its elysian isles-of wooded hills and cultured valleys-of picturesque hamlets, snug farms, and isolated cottages perched on the hill-sides, or nestling in the dells.

Illford Manor, too, peeped from its girdling trees, beside the old ivy-clad church of the village; and far to the west, the old battlements of Somner Castle, the ancestral seat of Lord Derrington, shone in the unobscured sunlight, above intercepting masses of dark wood-the waste of blue waters stretching far beyond-the grandeur of the

mighty fortress concealed, guarded by gloom, and throned on shadowy cliffs, against which the unweariable ocean ever warred in vain.

CHAPTER III.

GROWING in a sheltered nook, Miss Lydia caught sight of a rich cluster of wild flowers; the warmth of their sheltered situation had promoted their early bloom, and as they were, though indigenous productions, seldom seen but in the west of England, they were new to her.

How lovely! do gather them for me, Sir Frederick; I must have them, positively!"