awakened, for a carrige had driven rapidly into the court; a loud ring at the gates, and a loud barking of the dogs, had announced an arrival. In less than two minutes Mr. Delawarr had entered the room, and been installed in a seat near the fire; Mrs. Arundel had vanished; and her husband had called up his best manner, his kindest, to welcome one who, though an old friend, had been mostly recalled to his memory by the newspaper. The visitor was as gracefully as briefly, rather accounting than apologising for his sudden intrusion, by saying that an accident to his carriage had made him late, and turned him from the direct road; and that, though a sportsman no longer, he could not be so near without coming to see if his old instructor in the game laws had quite forgotten the feats of other days. Now this was both vrai and vraisemblable enough; for, to do Mr. Delawarr justice, if there had been mention made of the declining health of the member for Avonsford, and of his friend's influence in that town, at whose entrance stood the ancient family house, it only gave inclination a motive, or rather an excuse for indulgence.

.

Very different was the impression produced on all the party. Mr. Arundel could not conceal his surprise, or rather emotion, to see in the pale, mind-worn brow-the elegant but indolent movements of the man of forty, so little trace remaining of the bright-eyed and bright-haired, the lively and impetuous favourite of nineteen; still less in the worldly, half-studied, half-sarcastic tone of his conversation, did any thing recall the romance, the early enthusiasm, which once rendered the interest he inspired one of anxiety. But Mr. Arundel forgot that the most sparkling wines soonest lose that sparkle. The impetuosity of youth becomes energy in manhood, and Mr. Delawarr's stormy political career was one to call forth every talent: circumstances form the character, but, like petrifying waters, they harden while they form.

To Mrs. Arundel he was the same as any other guestone who was to eat, drink, and sleep in her house; all her hopes, fears, "an undistinguishable throng," rested with her cook and housemaid.

Emily had at first shrunk back, in that intuitive awe which all little people at least must have experienced--the feeling which fixes the eye and chains the lip, on finding ourselves for the first time in the presence of some great man, hitherto to us as an historical portrait, one whose

Mar

thoughts are of the destinies of nations, whose part seems
in the annals of England, and not in its society. If such
there be, who can come in contact with a being like this
without drawing the breath more quickly and quietly, they
have only less excitability than we have; and for them tant
pis or tant mieux, according to that golden rule of judgment,
as it turns out. This, however, wore off; the attention of
a superior is too flattering to our vanity not to call it forth,
and Emily soon found herself talking, smiling, and singing
her very best not that Mr. Delawarr was, generally speak-
ing, at all like the knights of old, voués aux dames.
ried metaphorically to his place in the ministry, and actually
to the daughter of Lord Etheringhame; too worldly to be
interested, too busy to be amused; young ladies were very
much to him what inhabitants in a borough without votes
are--non-entities in creation. But sentiment, like salt, is so
universal an ingredient in our composition, that even Mr.
Delawarr, years and years ago, had looked at a rainbow to
dream of a cheek, had gathered violets with the dew on
them, and thought them less bright than the eyes to which
they were offerings, had rhymed to one beloved name, and
had felt one fair cousin to be the fairest of created things.
That cousin was Emily's mother, and her great likeness to
her called up a host of early fancies and feelings, over which
he scarcely knew whether to sigh or smile. He might smile
to think how the lover had wasted his time, and yet sigh to
think how pleasantly it had been wasted. But Mr. Dela-
warr knew well,

""Tis folly to dream of a bower of green,
When there is not a leaf on the tree :"

and, turning from the past to the present, a little judicious appreciation of his host's claret and conversation obtained, before they parted for the night, more than a hint that Mr. Arundel's influence in the borough was at the disposal of the man who so well understood his country's true interests. Still, Emily was not forgotten; and the next morning she looked so like her mother while pouring the cream into his coffee, that the invitation he gave her to visit Lady Alicia in London was as sincere as it was cordially expressed. And when they gathered, with old-fashioned courtesy, on the stone steps of the ancient hall, to give their parting greeting, as the carriage drove off with true English haste, never did man leave his character more safely behind him.

Mr. Arundel went to read a pamphlet on the corn laws with double-distilled admiration, after his own conviction had been strengthened by that of one of his majesty's ministers; Emily went to her favourite lime-walk, to wonder what Lady Alicia was like, to dream of the delights of a "London season," to admire Mr. Delawarr's manner,-in short, he need only not have been a politician (the very name was a stumbling-block to a young lady's romance,) and he would have been erected into a hero fit for a modern novel, a destiny not exactly what he anticipated. Mrs. Arundel was as thoroughly satisfied as either, perhaps more so, for she was satisfied with herself-a supper, sleeping, and breakfast, got though without a blunder; so to her house-keeper she went "in her glory."

CHAPTER III.

"Two springs I saw."-MOORE,

"Good night-how can such night be good?"-Shelley.

"Night, oh, not night: where are its comrades twain-silence and sleep?"-L. E. L.

SNOW-DROPPED, crocused, and violeted Spring, in the country, was beginning to consider about making her will, and leaving her legacies of full-blown flowers and green fruit to summer, when a letter from town arrived, franked by Montague Delawarr, M. P., saying that as the spring was now commencing in town, perhaps Miss Arundel would remember a hope she once gave, and comply with the request contained in the note which the said Mr. Delawarr had the honour of enclosing.

The note expressed the usual number of fears, honours, and pleasures, which usually accompany invitations; was written in hand of even more than usually elegant unintel ligible expansiveness; was on pale sea-green paper, sealed with lilac wax; and came from Lady Alicia. Now this was a most disinterested act; for the member had recovered, and taken that step of all others which insures existence, purchased a life annuity; and it is a well known fact in physiology, that annuitants and old women never die. But Mr. Delawarr had taken an interest in his young rela

tive; he knew his house was one of the most elegant, his wife one of the best-dressed women in London, and that she never spent an evening at home,-could he do more for Emily than open such a vista of fêtes and fashions to her futurity?

If any of the party at Arundel House hesitated about the invitation's affirmative, it was herself. Her aunt had a great notion of giving young people as much pleasure as possible, for they would have no time for it after they were married; and her uncle, kind and affectionate, only thought of his favourite's enjoyment, perhaps her advantage. Like many men of quiet manners, and still quieter habits his imagination was active in the extreme, and had been but little put eut of its way by either wordly exertions or disappointments. Thus, before his first egg was finished, Emily had refused three baronets, looked coldy on a viscount, had two earls at her feet; and if the object of this reverie had not destroyed her own good fortune by speaking, she was in a fair way of becoming a duchess.

But though to Emily London was as much an El Dorado as novels and novelty could make it; yet if her first exclamation was delight, her second was, "but my dear uncle, you will miss me so ;" and a long array of solitary walks and lonely rides rose almost reproachfully to her mind. This, however, the uncle would not admit; and youth, if not selfish, is at least thoughtless; so a few minutes saw Emily bounding up stairs, with spirits even lighter than her steps, to answer the important billet, which she had already conned over till she could have repeated it from the "Dear Miss Arundel" at the beginning, to the "Alicia C. F. G. Delawarr" of the signature. Many a sheet of paper was thrown aside in various stages, from two to ten lines-twice was the ink changed, and twenty times the pen, before a note worthy of either writer or reader could be effected: but time and the post wait for no man, and necessity was in this case, as in most others, the mother of invention.

The next week passed, as such weeks always do, in doing nothing, because so much is to be done-in packing and unpacking, till the Labyrinth of Crete was nothing to that of trunks; in farewell calls, in lingering walks, in careful commendations to the gardener of divers pet roses, carnations, &c.; and more than three parts of the time at her uncle's side, who every now and then began giving good advice, which always ended in affectionate wishes.

The morning of her departure arrived-cold, rainy, miserable but very much in unison with Emily's feelings. A great change in life is like a cold bath in winter-we all hesitate at the first plunge. Affection is more matter of habit than sentiment, more so than we like to admit; and she was leaving both habits and affections behind. There were the servants gathered in the hall, with proper farewell faces; her aunt, hitherto busy in seeing the carriage duly crammed with sandwiches and sweetmeats, having nothing more to do, began to weep. A white handkerchief is a signal of distress always answered; and when Mr. Arundel took his place beside his niece, he had nothing but the vague and usual consolation of "Love, pray don't cry so," to offer for the first stage.

But the day and Emily's face cleared up at last; her uncle was still with her, the post-boys drove with exhilarating rapidity and night found them seated by a cheerful fire, with a good supper and better appetite. The morning came again and Mr. Arundel was now to leave his niece.

O pleasure! you're indeed a pleasant thing;"

and our heroine was setting of in pursuit of it, as miserable as any young lady need be. The last sight of the pannels of the old yellow coach was the signal for another burst of tears, which extended to three stages to-day, and perhaps would have reached to a fourth, had she not been roused to anger by her maid's laughter, whose gravity, though most exemplary in the outset, now gave way to the mirth excited by the rapidity with which a ponderous-looking person, outside a stage-coach, had lost hat, umbrella, and bundle, while the vehicle rolled rapidly over them. There is something very amusing in the misfortunes of others. However, to borrow an established phrase from those worthy little volumes, entitled the Clergyman's Officer's and Merchant's Widows, when the disconsolate relict is recalled from weeping over the dear departed, by the paramount necessity of getting one of her fourteen children into the bluecoat school," the exertion did her good;" and she was soon sufficiently amused to regret when the darkness shut out all view save the post-boy.

Adventures never happen now-a-days; there are neither knights nor highwaymen; no lonely heaths with gibbets for finger-posts; no hope of even a dangerous rut, or a steep hill; romance and roads are alike macadamised; no