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mair colour; Ellen's a wee bit pale, and too grave for sae young a lassie. Oh! I was here, and there, and every where, singing like a lark. Young people are na what they were— but a' things are changed for the waur; here in London they boast o' their furniture and their finery. I'm sure I never, wi' a' their inventions, met wi' an arm-chair sae aisy as my puir father's aisy-chair at the Grange, when he was awa, and I stepped into it, 'young romp as I was,' and sune fell fast asleep by the ingle nook; and as for glasses-these may be bigger and ha' finer frames, but I never shall luke agen in such a glass, as the wee oval mirror in which I used to tie my snood, or the sma' chimneyglass over the parlour mantel, in which I could see, for Donald and mysel, to talk wi' our silly fingers a' across the room, while puir father slept, better than I can see mysel in this, standing close by it."

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Ellen's return prevented De Villeneuve's reply. May I stay here," he said, "till some one of the family comes in? I have no where to go to—at least no where, where I do

not hate to go," he added, in a low voice; "let me sit and read by this fire. Twill soothe to be where thou hast been."

Ellen tried to laugh away his earnestness, while she gave the assent she could not withhold.

"And, while you stay in the room, dinna let the fire go out, count," said Miss Tibby, as he handed Ellen and herself to the carriage. "It's a fine spring day, but a gude fire's na unwelcome for a' that, sa dinna forget, count," said Tibby, bowing.

"I will welcome you back to a warm fireside," replied De Villeneuve, speaking to Tibby, but looking at Ellen," an English fireside, and the faces we love, what has earth, what has heaven ...... The rest of the sentence was lost, for the carriage drove rapidly away. De Villeneuve glided noiselessly backhis heart beat with a strange joy—he would go and sit in Ellen's chair, he would kiss the scarf she had left there, he would turn over all the thousand nameless knickknacks in her workbox and basket, all impregnated with a

taint odour of violets peculiar to her, for she ever wore them-her miniature lay on the table, and he would look at it, till the saintlike blue eyes and rubied lips would seem to smile upon him. He was a poet, strange mixture, a poet and a sensualist; and he could fancy a wild delight in spending hours thus! but, as he hurried with the stealthy step of secret joy to the drawing-room, he saw Annie; her back was towards him, as she knelt upon the rug; she was alternately kissing and clasping to her bosom a glove, which he recognized as his own. Annie thought that he was gone, and that he had inadvertently left the glove. He was struck by the beauty of her form and attitude, and by her passionate love, so contrasted with Ellen's reserve; the former had humbled him, the latter raised him again in his own opinion.

"Si on n'a pas ce qu'on aime
Il faut aimer ce qu'on a,"

he said to himself; for he was a Frenchman of the école romantique. A passionate worship of a lofty object was not incompatible, in

his volatile heart, with a sort of love for an humbler being.

Annie was a beautiful simple girl, in love with him, thinking him perfection; and he was a mixture of the philosopher, the poet, the roué, and the freethinker. Alas for poor Annie!... but Annie's love was the first love of a virtuous girl; she suspected no baseness, no evil, in one from whose eloquent tongue flowed virtue made musical.

Hers, too,

"The wild sweet briary fence,

That awes the touch while winning the sense." So when Adolphe drew near her unawares, and, exclaiming "Beautiful Annie, how I envy my glove!" attempting at the same time to raise and press her to his heart, she uttered a faint cry, and, tearing herself from his embrace, sat down in all the angry dignity of a maiden thus offended for the first time. The eversupple knee of De Villeneuve was obliged to bend, and all his eloquence was essayed before he could win the pardon of the wild Scotch lassie; at length, however, he prevailed, for

Love pleaded for him. He won from her a confession of her affection, he held her trembling hand, he improvised a tale of deep passion and awful necessity for inviolable secrecy, till he could declare himself openly. This poor Annie promised. Alas! in such cases woman's heart is but too prone to conceal. Secrecy is the chosen nurse of first love. Annie was proud and happy, for she felt sure she had made a conquest of the man she loved; De Villeneuve was proud and happy, for he felt sure he should easily make a victim of the woman who loved him.

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