is not come in, she only went out for a ride. Where can she be ?"

"Perhaps she rode to meet Julian," said Mr. Lindsay.

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"Oh, no!" exclaimed Annie; "Ellen is not the girl to go out to meet a young mon. She went the other way."

"How strange in her," said Augusta, "to go out at all, when my cousin is expected every minute! The hour when we anticipate meeting with the friend of our infancy is the festival of Hope; and I would not rob myself of its enjoyment by any exercise that could divert my attention."

Old Lindsay kissed his niece.

Grunter exclaimed, "Let's change this fine festival of Hope, Miss Augusta, for that of reality. Miss Ellen often comes in when dinner's half over. Miss Maxwell, allow me to offer my arm. There was great truth in your sensible observation on young people of the present day, ma'am.”

Miss Maxwell, softened, took Grunter's

arm, the party repaired to the dining-room, where the turbot, to Grunter's unspeakable rapture, proved to be done, as he expressed it, to a 'T.'

CHAPTER III.

Alas! that Poverty's evil eye

Should e'er come hither such sweets to wither.
The flowers lay down their heads to die,
And Hope grew pale as the witch drew nigh.

MOORE.

Mrs. Lindsay was a woman of humble birth, and imperfect education. Her beauty, which in early youth had been very great, had captivated Gregory Lindsay when yet an under-graduate at Oxford, romantic and devoted (a reading-man, too); and, therefore, not roving like a butterfly from sweet to sweet, he remained constant to his first love. He obtained a high class, took orders, married on a curacy and a hundred a year, and knew for a time all the miseries of poverty and disappointed hope-of the annual

addition to his family of a young heir or heiress of sorrow-of pupils with their own dulness and contumacy, and their parents' discontent and the complainings of a wife who sincerely regretted having married a poor gentleman, as she said, for love, when, shabbily clad, she found herself splashed by the gay carriages of ci-devant tradesmen (then rich merchants) whom she had rejected, and compared the waving plumes and velvet robes of their wives, their complacent looks, and over-decked offspring with her own turned silk and home-made bonnet, her beauty on which care had done the work of time, and the vamped up finery of her lovely children.

The reverend Gregory was about to conquer his pride, and attempt to open an actual school, when his father-who, proud as Lucifer, or as a Scotchman with a long pedigree, had never forgiven or noticed him after his marriage with a Miss Gubbs-died, and he, as eldest son, succeeded to a small patrimony. At the same time a moderate living was bestowed upon him by his university, and

Competence (dear domestic angel!) sate at his board and by his fireside. Mrs. Lindsay renewed her own and her children's wardrobe; and, as the rector's wife, looked from the rector's pew a very unchristian degree of scorn on all her upstart rivals.

Meanwhile, Gregory gave to a grand classical work the time he had been forced hitherto to bestow on stupidity and the Latin grammar. He generously shared with his brother, Edgar, the patrimony of which the entail ceased with him.

Edgar, who, having displayed no genius for the classics, had been condemned to a mercantile career, went abroad with his small capital, married, and returned some years before the opening of our tale, a very wealthy widower, with one son, Julian, then a boy of fifteen.

He found Gregory and his wife grown somewhat round and rubicund, and of all their children two fair girls alone survived-one Augusta, of the same age with Julian; the other, Ellen, a little younger than her cousin,