titled "Acts of the Kingdom of France," and under the reign of Chilperic found the story of Fredegonda and of Queen Oudinaire. -How the former had contrived to displace the other, and seat herself in her rival's place upon the throne.-How she had then set herself to work in order to destroy the late Queen's children, and thus make way for the succession of her own. Inez read this and mused on it, then read and mused on it again, then clapped her hands and cried"Oh! that the like might chance to me!" Then did she mark the page, and rising from her study pace the chamber to and fro,-and stop and muse, and smile to think-thatthat " Who knows what fortune yet may fling within my grasp?" Then did a sudden. pang arise and chill her heart-and then did she bite her nether lip, and stand and strike her heel upon the ground, as her brow knit itself in thought. How am I lost within the gloomy walls of this still, antique convent!—When-Oh when-Shall I then never

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break the bonds which keep me lingering

here!-here in these cloisters, as little meet to hold my spirit, as my spirit is to do them honor. Shall I ne'er, bursting from these hated cells, assume myself and bustle with mankind, all suited as I feel to struggle with it!"

Inez had now reached her eighteenth anniversary.—Each succeeding year, month, week, and day, became more tedious to her, and she herself more disgusted with the gloominess of her habitation, and every hour did she pour forth-not prayers to heaven, for her thoughts took not that direction;-but-wishes for a liberation from it, and curses on her own ill fate, which bound her to a spot she loathed.

Yet might she long have continued unavailingly to do so, and have perhaps grown old and died in the place in which she thus dolefully lingered out her youth, had not fortune befriended her in a most unexpected manner. A distant relation of her father-who, though he had had many children had lost them one by one, either by sickness or in battle,—died;

and his estate devolved by a natural succession to Inez.

Her young heart bounded in exultation as, seated on her mule in the act of departure, she waved her hand and bade a glad adieu to the darkly frowning walls of that convent which had for so many years been to her a prison house, and to the sisters; many of whom without doubt envied her the liberty she was about to enjoy.

"Now then I see kind heaven hath not in vain bestowed on me the gift of beauty!There will be tournaments, and I shall view them not as formerly, standing aloof amidst a rabble throng of clouted shooned artificers and clowns; but seated at ease amid mine equals. Then there will be fêtes, and dancing, and revelry, such as I have read of-such as I have seen; but, seeing, blushed at thinking how remote I was from those I enviedwho will now, perhaps, envy me! and gallant Knights and high Seigneurs will court my smile and strive to win my favor-and I shall

sit and converse with dames and damoiselles of passing beauty. Yet-Oh my vain heart!— 'Tis well that none o'erhears me.-Yet, perhaps, may I be deemed as beautiful-as beautiful! wherefore not?-and why not even more beautiful than they? For what is loveliness but that which pleaseth? And what doth please more than wit, talent, intelligence-all which I have, thanks to the good old lady Abbess-when they are found with the beauty which I received from nature."

These were pleasing reflections, and though somewhat extravagant-as she afterwards found, for " gallant Knights and high Seigneurs" waited not on her at first with quite so much humility as she expected-were extremely natural to a young beauty just about to make a debut in the world, of which she knew almost nothing. She was in the midst of such when the mule on which she was seated stopped at the residence of her mother, whom she found preparing for an immediate departure to their new habitation at St. Omer, whither they went on the following morning.

It is not my design to detain the reader from the main part of the story, by entering into a longer detail than necessary of her conduct during the first years of manumission; let it suffice to say, that what with her beauty -her natural wit, or rather perhaps her natural quickness of intellect, and her talent, improved as it had been by education, and added to these the possession of an estate which, though scarcely equal to her father's domain, and by no means large enough to place her upon a footing of equality with those with whom she had fondly expected to have been so, was sufficiently so to enable her to make a fair figure in the world, she had no reason to complain of a lack of suitors.

But Inez was not a maid to give-as many maidens give-her hand to one who had nought, or little else, than his own hand to offer in return. The first, the sole object of her existence, was to advance her consequence in the world. The fortune she had inherited was regarded by her only as a means of acquiring a still larger one.