girl's nearest relative, and I must proceed. Mrs. Hawthorne," continued he, addressing the matron, who, with a jealous eye, was scrutinizing the two speakers from the further extremity of the room, "Mrs. Hawthorne, shall I attend you?"

Indeed, Mr. Lewis," answered she, “I think that there is no more time to be lost."

"You will remember how earnestly I have warned you both," resumed Cécile calmly, and without offering any additional opposition, she moved towards the outer door of the cottage, there again to breathe the external air.

In a moment, St. Edmunds was at her side, but so absorbed did she seem by her own agitated reflections, that he did not venture to address her, until, suddenly fixing her eyes full upon him, she said:

"Perhaps, it is well that there should be an impartial witness like yourself to what has occurred, and may still occur here. I fear that I shall be called to an awful account for what I have felt it incumbent upon me to do, but my support will come from above."

Ere our hero could offer any reply, the attention of both was painfully arrested by the sound

of faint but oft-repeated shrieks, proceeding from the sick chamber within.

"I had dreaded as much," rejoined Cécile, responding to the anxiously inquiring look of her companion. "The poor girl's mind is fearfully excited and enfeebled, and they are trying her beyond her powers of endurance. Holy Virgin, what shall I do ?”

"Do, Miss Basinstoke ? that she is calling to you? to her."

Cannot you hear

Surely you will go

"I ought—I must—and you shall accompany

me."

"I, Miss Basinstoke ?" replied our hero, a little startled.

"Yes, you, Lord St. Edmunds," added she, in a low, but strangely animated voice, " since Heaven itself appears to have ordained that you should witness this death-bed. Be not afraid.

You know that:

""Tis but a pang, and then a thrill,
And then an end of human ill."

And yet, when he entered the humble chamber of death, our hero, who was entirely new to such scenes, felt himself awe-stricken in the

extreme. There, reclining upon the lowly couch which she was never again to leave, lay the still-comely maiden whose appearance and manners had so deeply interested him, even before her sad tale had been disclosed. On the further side stood the village apothecary and nurse, retained by Cécile herself, and endeavouring to conceal the appalling symptoms which the broken blood-vessel was almost momentarily revealing; on the other side, nearer to the door, Mr. Lewis and Mrs. Hawthorne were respectively endeavouring, he to soothe, and she to subdue the fitful agitation of the sufferer.

"Surely you won't die as you lived, rejecting the Holy Word of God?" muttered the unrelenting step-mother.

"Oh! don't speak to me so," cried the deathstricken girl, "you will kill me before my time. Miss Basinstoke, dear Miss Cécile, you pure angel of light, for the love of Heaven, you must not forsake me. You know all I wish, all I hope, all I ask; do persuade them to torture me no more. I cannot bear it, I really cannot," and, with a low moaning cry, she resigned her head in the nurse's arms.

"This is dangerous work," whispered the apothecary: "here is the blood flowing again."

"Are you not persuaded yet, Mr. Lewis ?" inquired Cécile, not without a slight accent of asperity.

"I am convinced, Miss Basinstoke," answered he, "that now I may not attempt more. You told me, I believe, that you had sent for Father Athanasius. I can wait in the next room till he comes; do you in the meanwhile stay with this unhappy sufferer, who certainly appears to derive from your society a solace which I may not impart. Come with me, pray, Mrs. Hawthorne."

"Thank you, Mr. Lewis: I had expected as much from you," whispered Cécile, gratefully laying her hand on that of the retiring clergy

man.

St. Edmunds now approached the apothecary, and, drawing him aside, anxiously interrogated him as to the true condition of the patient, and the degree of hope which might still be entertained. The answers were as ominous as could well have been conceived, a few short hours more of existence being the utmost range assigned to the fast-failing powers of vitality. The

information elicited from the worthy Mr. Bolus was not, however, confined to this mere summary of the case. Impelled by the genuine spirit of his art, he enlarged upon each detail, symptom, and incident of the crisis with such technical zeal and fluency, that our hero's mind would no doubt have been considerably enlightened upon a subject somewhat novel to him as yet, had he been an attentive listener;-but we have some reasons for conjecturing that the conversation with the diffuse practitioner was ultimately used, if it had not been originally resorted to, as a pretext for remaining present at a scene which had awakened no inconsiderable interest.

And, in truth, what he then beheld was well calculated, from more motives than one, to arrest his passing attention. Cécile had sat down upon the bed, close to the pillow of the sufferer, and supporting in her arms the drooping head of poor Mabel, was whispering, with the tenderness of a sister, each word of consolation which the feelings that absorbed her could suggest.

"Is there no hope whatever left ?" inquired the dying girl, not for the first time,