mained till midnight, pondering on the possibility of affording the only relief which would certainly terminate them. His indignation was excited at what, he feared, must have been idle gallantry on the part of Lord William, for he could not accuse her of too fond a credulity, in giving credit to the sincerity of attentions which were considered serious by all the world. The man who could trifle wantonly with the feelings of so innocent a creature, he considered as unworthy of possessing her. Yet, again, he reflected, that though perhaps careless and unprincipled to a culpable degree, with respect to the affections of a beautiful girl, Lord William bore a very high reputation in the world, as a man of sense and honour; and farther, that he possibly might be entirely ignorant of the strength of the impression he had made.

He could see nothing in the affair to justify any one in desiring to terminate it by a final

separation. And this being the case, he concluded by a resolution, should the means be ever presented, to forward it as far as lay in his power. But most especially he resolved to watch carefully the course things might take, and as a friend of her father's, to interpose, in place of a brother, should he find cause to suspect any intention of rendering her the victim of injustice or caprice.

Those who know by experience the force and the weakness of a young man's love—its ardent wishes—its rankling jealousies—the bitterness, the distraction with which the idea of a loved object in the possession of another fills the breast, may appreciate the generosity of Charles,—a generosity, in which many will find it impossible to sympathize. But he, like the fond mother, in the beautiful story of Scripture, preferred his own despair to the destruction of the darling

of his affections.-Shall we say, therefore,

that he loved less ardently than many of his race?

The next day put all these good resolutions to the proof.

CHAPTER IX.

It was a soft, warm day in the beginning of August, when the stillness of the air-where the lightest leaf has ceased to flutter; the heat rather enervating than oppressive; and the perfect quiet in which the usually busy inhabitants of the woods and groves seen reposing, disposes the mind to tranquillity and tenderness.

Mr. Phillips was under the necessity of returning that day to his patients, and to his home; and Mary, who, in her quiet, unobtrusive way, had made a very great sacrifice, by consenting to remain at the Vicarage, was gone

with her children to accompany him a short

way upon his journey.

Louisa, left to herself, and occupied by her own melancholy musings, had strolled into the little wood which terminated her father's garden.

This pleasant little copse was a tangled wilderness of hazels, mountain ash, holly, and oak, under which, in spring, the ground was absolutely enamelled with flowers. The blue hyacinth forming, as it were, one sheet of lapis lazuli, tinted by the delicate pink of the lychnis, and relieved by the little white cockleshell of the stitchwort-Here the birds were wont to make the morning and evening vocal, with their songs; the thrush called to his mate from some golden-foliaged oak, while the blackbird's mellow tone burst from a thicket hard by.

Now, all this music was silent, all these flowers faded-save now and then a flaunting honeysuckle, and a last, faint, fading rose. But the