sunny as her complexion, but she is as sharp, you must know, as the finest needle in that little case of hers which bears the fearfully prophetic legend: Qui me néglige me perd; and amazingly wise, and keeps all the household accounts

in surprisingly good order. She is very

learned, besides; and should you ever be allowed, as we have been, to intrude yourself into her bower, you will find there-in addition to a Maltese dog, a beautiful West Indian bird, called "Dandy," and an infinity of flowersa vast number of books; not silly romances and novels, we can tell you, but historical works, and religious works the most abstruse, in English, in French, in German, in Italian— all of them bearing throughout sundry annotations and reflections, edited and inscribed by the same fair hand and no mistake. But as everybody in Europe knows something about Constance Basinstoke, perhaps we should do well not any further to commit ourselves by such vain attempts to trace her duly recognised qualifications, but rather reveal something respecting the circumstances which had brought her humbler cousin Cécile into such close communication with her.

We have already seen, by the latter's own cursory account of herself, that her immediate prospects in life were by no means brilliant. This extreme disparity of worldly advantages between those who are nearest of kin, has nothing so surprising in itself that it should call for any particular notice; but there were certain peculiarities both in the fate and fortunes of Cécile's parents and in her own, which require to be briefly elucidated for the better comprehension of our subsequent narrative. Her father, George Basinstoke, highly gifted enough, by all accounts, as a man of the world, had achieved such utter ruin to himself by his fatal and incurable propensity for gambling, that he had been constrained to fly from England, and pass the latter part of his life in the South of France. There, he had become passionately attached to a young person of most respectable birth and parentage, whom he subsequently married. Within two years of this inauspicious union, George Basinstoke died, leaving his only and infant child, Cécile, to the care of his penniless widow. Mrs. or rather Madame Basinstoke, as she was usually called, discharged her duties as a mother with the most unwearying and

affectionate solicitude; but if evil reports are to be credited in this instance, solitude and poverty were to her dangerous counsellors enough. As she has long since been called to her last account, we need not inquire now to what extent these injurious rumours were founded; but we have some reason to fear that Lady Helen was better justified in entertaining various misgivings respecting the conduct of her foreign relative, than she assuredly was in proclaiming these so positively and so harshly as she occasionally was wont to do.

Cécile was about fourteen years old when her mother, having reached the last stage of a lingering and fatal illness, prevailed upon Sir Charles Basinstoke, after several pathetic appeals, to join her, and be present at the closing scene. The worthy Baronet had ever been most sincerely attached to his deceased brother, and the prejudice which he had naturally enough been led to harbour against his sister-in-law, was rapidly dispelled by the emotions of the awful

called upon to witness.

spectacle that he was

Thus, the last mortal

sound which reached the ear of the dying parent, was a solemn promise that her orphan child

should find a daughter's home at Redburn, and this pledge was as faithfully kept as it was cordially given.

We will do Lady Helen the justice to say, that the consequent arrangement met with no sort of sympathy or assent on her part from the very first. Her foremost duty, she deemed, was to her own children; nor did she conceive that she was acting up to that duty, with respect to one of them, at least, by introducing to her constant and hourly intimacy a companion whose faith, education and pursuits had been, as yet, the very reverse of what she herself had endeavoured to instil and to prescribe. Sir Charles encountered these objections with such arguments as the case suggested, among which, unfortunately, was a far too confident anticipation that, with judicious management, their young niece's mind and disposition, as well as her creed itself, might yet be refashioned agreeably to the notions of her new protectors.

This expectation, while realized in part, was, upon one essential point, destined to be frustrated. Cécile was wild and untutored enough at first; but whether through the continued

good example of Constance, or owing to the firm and unrelenting severity of Lady Helen's rule, she eventually became, not without some fierce struggles against her fate, as tractable and docile, upon general matters, as could well be required. But the more successful was her aunt's tuition in this respect, the more completely did it prove abortive in its principal endeavour, that of redeeming its charge from the errors and superstitions of the Catholic faith. That religion little Cécile had vowed on her mother's death-bed never to forswear, and to the fulfilment of this pledge she adhered with invincible tenacity. In vain was she conducted to church, and instructed, not only by her aunt, but by the Rev. Doctor Wellendowed himself, in the leading principles of the Reformation: she could not be induced to recognise, as truly sacred, either the place, or the instruction, or the holy divine himself. Her rosary and crucifix were taken from her; her little libraryone volume of Thomas à Kempis, two of Arnauld, and four of Bossuet-was summarily confiscated, and some of her less reverential repartees were visited with such punishments as her age might yet admit of: still she remained