the immortal overcoming death. The spiritual form gradually evolved, till, at the last breath, disengaged and glowing with etherealized youth and beauty, it rose, floated off, and received by loving and caressing spirits, it disappeared, wreathed in their arms!

Archibald Lisle had told Grace of this vision, which greatly excited her imagination at the time, and she now felt as if she were breathing a preternatural atmosphere. She started, recalled to the actual world by the opening of the door, and the ingliding of the genius loci. Grace stood for a moment embarrassed, and really awe-stricken, though to a rational observer there seemed nothing in the little modest woman before her to inspire such an emotion. To be sure, she was pale and attenuated to the last degree, and looked as if her venture upon supernatural power had been visited with the curse of Prometheus's audacity, but not like his had her vitality been reproduced.

After a moment, while the Pythoness waited with an expression of benign inquiry, Grace said, stammeringly, You will excuse my intrusion-I want to ask a favour from you-help."

"Of me?" she replied, looking up half incredulously at Grace, who, in the power of youth, beauty, and elegance, stood head and shoulders above her. "Remember you once rejected help proffered through me-you seemed then self-poised-self-reliant."

"I am not so-I am not," cried Grace, vehemently,— "I am staggering in the dark, and want light, more than ever mortal wanted it."

Ida Roorbach smiled seriously, and shook her head. "We should try natural, customary, providential means of self-enlightenment," she said, "before we resort to such as should be reserved for perplexing exigencies."

"Mine is a most perplexing exigency," replied Grace, and then added, for she dared not evade the simplicity and truth that impressed her with reverence, No, perhaps I have not sought counsel where I should, but other judgments are fallible as well as mine-I want unerring guidance."

"A revelation? I cannot give it."

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"No, not a revelation, but an intuition-an inspiration-a preternatural impression-I know not what you call it. Dear madam, I want you to read a letter for me

"I have no preternatural power, friend. Perhaps I have a deeper experience of the potency of nature than some others have. It is by shutting out the disturbances of the outer world, and wholly committing and resigning myself to my spiritual nature, that I learn how far its sphere extends;-few know theirs, simply because they do not prove it. It is no new thing that I tell you. 'He who believeth in nature,' says Paracelsus, will obtain from nature to the extent of his faith.' You have brought me a letter to read ?"

"Yes-but perhaps you know me, and may surmise—" "No, young lady, I do not know you. I have seen you but once, and then I think you distrusted me-perhaps not remembering that the Gospel, even the good news, was committed to those humble in the world, and weak in the flesh. As to 'surmising," she added, with dignity, "I never surmise; that would be untruth to myself. But come, friend, give me your riddle to read."

"You do not know the handwriting ?" said Grace, giving her Copley's letter.

I never look at the handwriting. My apprehension is not through the eye. The writer's mind is transfused into mine; for the moment I lose my self-consciousness, and receive another's. Nor does the purport of the letter signify. It may be written simply in good faith, or it may contain the elaborated glosses of falsehood. It is the spirit of the writer which is manifested in me, and to me." She drew a chair for Grace, and one for herself, but before sitting down, "I cannot oblige you," she said, "unless you first assure me that your correspondent is free from bodily disease. I have already suffered much physical malady, through the inscrutable effect, on my nervous system, of this letter-reading. I have had temporary deafness, blindness, indescribable pain, paralysis, and permanent debility." Grace assured her there was no risk in the present case. She gazed at the seeress with a throbbing heart, as she sat down, and, glancing at the pictures on the wall, fixed her large, blue, prominent,

calm eye on the Parca of Michael Angelo. Her simplicity, the guilelessness of her manner, her freedom from all charlatanerie, her faith in herself, inspired Grace with a conviction of her truth and her power; and all combined, heightened the solemnity with which she awaited a revelation from the arcana of nature. The oracle laid the letter on her bosom, and kept it there by the firm pressure of her hand. Her head was slightly raised, and her eyes, half veiled by her drooping lids, remained steadfast to the picture. There was not the slightest movement, or apparent quickening of her pulses, for the space of a quarter of an hour. Then came the faintest hue of colour in her pale cheek; it deepened, the blood mounted, the veins in her broad forehead swelled, and her brow contracted, her mouth took a sinister expression, her eyes glanced craftily from side to side, and she shrunk, as if eluding observation. Then, springing to her feet, she threw the letter into the fire, as St. Paul shook the viper from his hand, sunk back in her chair, and covered her face.

After some moments of silence, unbroken save by the loud beating of poor Grace's heart, Ida Roorbach's countenance recovered its usual sweet and composed expression, and beckoning Grace to her, for she was too much exhausted to rise, she laid her ghastly hand on her, and said tenderly, in a low, quivering voice, "I could not speak-my lips were sealed; and having been so by an irresistible power, I cannot, dare not, now unseal them." "But why-oh tell me, why you looked so? Why had your face that hateful expression ?"

"I do not know how I looked," she replied, mournfully. Tell me, then, how you felt-why you threw the letter into the fire, as if it stung you ?"

Ida Roorbach hesitated, and then said, with decision, My friend, I feel that I am not permitted to impart to you what I experienced. My duty is made clear to me. A heathen woman," she continued, pointing to the picture of the Fates, "might ask her destiny of those children of night and daughters of necessity; but now, my eye is turned to the day-spring from on high, and the word borne into my mind to speak to you is, Work out your own deliverance!"

Grace returned to her home. She had opened the book of prophecy, and it was steeped in shadows. She tried the thousand-times repeated experiment of Icarus, and the wings had dropped in the forbidden element, under the stern law, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther."

MISS HERBERT went in, on her way to her sister's, to Steinberg's music-shop. He was not there. The door was ajar that communicated with a little inner parlour; and while she was tossing over some sheets of music on the counter, she heard voices. One was cheerful, and familiar; the other low, and "full of tears."

"Letty," said Lisle, "I see you are not well-you are working too hard.”

'Oh, no! indeed I am not; my work is my life." "Then the children torment you ?"

"No, Archy, they are very good, and they love me, and I love them."

"Then the long and the short of it is, our evening lessons are too much for you. I shall come no more.

'Oh, Archy, don't say so."

"What is the use, Letty, of wearing yourself out? You read German well enough, and you are learning of the Steinbergs to speak it charmingly."

"Well, Archy, do as you think best; it must be a weary task for you."

"No indeed, dear Letty, it is a pleasure-a very great pleasure."

"Then continue to come; do, Archy-I have no other pleasure," she added, in a more cheerful tone; but the last word did not reach Grace's ear, for the children at this moment made an inroad, followed by old Steinberg, who passed into the shop. He was interrupted in his excuses, by Grace's asking if those were his children.

"What for a question! no, Miss Herbert; my old woman and I are not Abraham and Sarah. These are my grand-children that Mr. Lisle, that gentleman in there, (bless him), took charge of from Germany, and has brought us the best little governess for them. You speak German-will you look in upon them ?"

While Grace hesitated, Lisle came into the shop. The sight of Miss Herbert checked him. He blushed, merely bowed, and passed on. The blush, only a suffusion caused by the sudden meeting, recalled Mrs. Milnor's gossip at Mrs. Tallis's reception. Grace gave no faith to it then, nor now; but her curiosity was awakened, and her feminine imagination had woven a tissue out of Letty's sweet and sad tones; so she graciously accepted the old man's invitation, and followed him. She recognised at the first glance the pale, pretty girl in half-mourning whom she had seen at the opera.

"Excuse," said old Steinberg, addressing Letty, "this is Miss Herbert, just looking in upon the little ones."

At the sound of this name, Letty's pale cheek reddened, and her soft, meek eye met Grace's. Both gazed inquiringly, and both, feeling the gaze might be offensive, averted their eyes,-Letty shrinking from the potent lady, whom it seemed presumption to regard as a rival, and Grace averting her eye with a feeling that might be thus translated into words: "Had that fellow, Belson, the audacity to eye this sweet, modest young woman with suspicion? How savage was Mrs. Milnor's gossip!"

"My friend, Mr. Lisle-or rather your friend," she said, "for I believe he is much more your's than mine— your teacher ?"

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"My teacher!" exclaimed Letty, overpowered by the grace of Miss Herbert's practised manner; "oh! no; Mr. Lisle is not my teacher, not at all—he only—that is-I mean he only comes