incarnation of Youth, Beauty, Elegance, Wealth, and Hope! Tears, large tears, slowly filled Ellen's eyes.

There is something inexpressibly affecting in a total change in the dress, air, and demeanour of one we love, when we know that alteration arises from some dreadful change of circumstances, some withering sorrow of the heart, or, as in Julian's case, from both. Ellen's rapid glance sufficed to show her that Julian's costly elegance of attire was changed for the plainest and most unassuming of garbs; her heart swelled as she fancied that, perhaps, for the sake of getting some employment, he had been obliged to change the fashionable into the respectable. Often had Ellen teased Julian about his long hair, and still more about his moustachios, which her correct taste told her were, however becoming, quite unjustifiable in any but a military man; often had she begged him to remove them; often had she quizzed him for his vanity in persisting

in wearing them; often had she earnestly wished to convince him of the folly and impropriety of an appendage which, but for the costly elegance of all his appointments, would have given him even a scampish appearance. And now they were gone, and she could have bewailed their loss. Gone, too, were the flowing locks: pale, his hat pulled over his brows, so quietly dressed, and with a step and manner so subdued, no eye but that of love would have recognised him.

He formed a strange contrast with De Villeneuve, who was more outré, more elaborately elegant than ever, and whose vehement action, rapid articulation, and eager foreign manner, made Julian's mournful reserve the more apparent.

Ellen wiped away her tears, and nerved herself for the meeting; and Annie, who was of an age when all are unconscious votaries of Hope, rushed to her own room, to choose a more becoming dress; smoothed and plaited

her profuse auburn hair, and arrayed herself to meet De Villeneuve in a new white robe, whose rose-coloured ribbons matched her burning cheeks, and were the livery all her feelings might be said to wear, now that he

was come.

CHAPTER LXI

Adversity may mark a brave man's face,
But in his bosom she shall never come
To make his heart her vassal."

Anthony and Cleopatra.

Ellen found Julian in earnest conversation with his father, and De Villeneuve standing apart in the recess of a window, as if anxious to hear nothing, but in reality gathering in every word uttered on either side with his large, pliant, French ear.

Julian was calm, pale, and resolute; on his fine features was the dignity of a recent triumph over Passion and Despair; to Ellen, in the palmiest days of his wealth and beauty, never had he seemed, as now, an object wor

thy of reverence as well as love. She felt not only that she was in what Sterne so beautifully calls" the venerable presence of Misery," but in that of an august fortitude, and a touching tenderness, which turned from all selfish sorrow, to dwell on that of all, whose fate was involved in the blow which had ruined

his peace.

The calm and unimpassioned Ellen (as people usually called her "wise judges are we of each other") grew deadly pale with intense emotion; her voice failed her, her knees trembled, and, had she yielded to the impulse of her feelings, she would have knelt, weeping, at the feet of that ruined and blighted man, the rejected, the jilted lover of her sister. De Villeneuve perceived that, all-engrossed by her cousin, Ellen was not even aware of his presence; and his and his eyes flashed, and he ground his teeth, and his heart breathed a few curses, as he looked at that young pair, as Satan might have looked at the first lovers. But he calmed