moved, and the sofa drawn round to the fire. But even the fire was gloomy; it filled the whole room with clouds of the greenest smoke: and nearly ten minutes elapsed before any one discovered the aperture of the stove to be closely shut down. Gradually, external inconveniences were one by one forgotten, and Pierce was left without interruption to the quiet enjoyment of his manifold cares.

How unenviable his train of reflection must have been, may be partly conceived when it is related that the whole of his past life, up to that very moment, appeared to him one long series of events which left no sensation but regret. Each succeeding step in his existence had been more foolish, and attended with worse results than the one before it; and at last his misfortunes had culminated to the highest point of ascendancy to which it was in the power human folly to raise them.

He had not even the common satisfaction
There was no

of thinking himself ill-used.

one he could possibly blame but himself; and the mortification at discovering the source of all his grievances in the egregious folly of his own conduct, was but little alleviated by the consideration of how much he should profit by the severity of his experience.

He blushed with shame and confusion at the thought of having presumed to imagine that Lady Eda was in love with him; and he ground his teeth with vexation for having placed himself in the ridiculous and contemptible position of a rejected suitor. As to the knowledge that thousands of other men had been in a similar position, it was so far from being any consolation to him, that the very commonness of it-the very fact that he had nothing more to be miserable about than they, was in itself an additional cause of annoyance. That a great many women should be false-should be flirts-was a matter of course; he had met with hundreds

such; they were hardly blameable; they

could not be otherwise; it was in their nature to be false; but that she, Eda Longvale, the realization of his wildest dreams, the perfect being which had always existed in his own brain, but never till now been found-the essence of purity and perfection the woman who possessed at once every attribute attached to the name of Woman in its divinest sense that she, for whom he would have died a thousand torturing deaths, or lived a life of slavery-she, on whom he had lavished such passionate love—before whose perfect nature he had bowed in absolute worship-beneath whose feet he had placed a heart, which he knew only too well -not from vanity, but by sad experiencethrobbed with fifty pulses for every one of common men-that she-that such a one had spurned him—had ridiculed his intentions-had treated him as if his ocean of love had been the shallow puddle of a schoolboy's eye-whim! was torture. He

It

knew his faults, he knew that, however much he loved, he could not make himself worthy of her. But who was worthy of her? Certainly others were rich, but could riches alone buy such as her? When he thought of himself as Pierce More, the plainfeatured and the poor, he bitterly felt the audacity he had been guilty of. But when he remembered the trials and hardships he had bravely encountered and as bravely overcome, the acquirements he was master of, which untold wealth alone could never purchase-the power and energy of his mindhis inborn capacity of unmeasured affection-his thirst and admiration for all that was great and noble and true-his yearning for improvement and for the means by which to work it when he thought of all these, he knew of no earthly object to whom such offerings should bring dishonour.

This first remembrance of what was due to himself, restored him in a measure to a

more tranquil state of mind. He slept for a few hours, and was only aroused after repeated shakings from the hands of Mr. Court, who hastened to convey to him the pleasant intelligence that a man very like a sheriff's officer had been let in by the housemaid, and was now waiting to speak with him.

An unpleasant misgiving crossed him that he was about to be troubled with a fresh dilemma. The suspicious-looking man was admitted, and it required but one glance at his aquiline nose and dark complexion-his extremely bad hat, and his great coat buttoned to the chin, to convince Pierce that the impressions of his valet had not been unfounded.

"Good morning, Sir," said the Hebrew, through the aquiline organ.

"What do you want?" said More, testily, as if there was the smallest chance of alarming the law's executor.