by attractions greater than those of his dear daughter, why he could not help it. As for fortune, the match was very desirable. But there might not be any thing in it after all. Miss Lawson was rather too independent a person to please most men-beyond mere personal admiration, he fancied!

And Edith, strange to say, only grew fonder of Gwendoline, the more her fears and suspicions as to her influence over Edgar were developed. She was taken ill in an expedition to Vesuvius, and it fell to Gwendoline's share to tend her with that skill and comfort which it was her peculiar province to employ ; and, like poor Bona, of whom in some degree Edith reminded Gwendoline, though if more commonplace she was not half so weak, or like poor worn-out Mrs. Fielden, the invalid, felt indescribably fascinated by the inexpressible comfort of such attendance, as if having once experienced its power, she could never more exist without it.

Perhaps Gwendoline took more pains to foster this influence than she ever before had consciously done, as a subtle expedient for mitigating the blow which Edith must receive through her means; thus rendering the hand through which must come her pain, a source also of healing to her. Yet she could not quite reconcile it to her conscience either, to let Edgar in his counter-absorption go on festering the heart-sore; and one day, in one of the brief opportunities alone afforded them for private communication, when he hoped to have drawn more confirmed assurance for himself from her words, she taxed him abruptly, almost reprovingly, with Edith's love which he had won.

He was startled and amazed. What could she possibly mean?

Edith, his sister, why should her love for him be any thing to be avoided or deplored?

"She is not your sister," Gwendoline said plainly, and the emphatic significance of her tone, caused a tide of consternation to flow into Edgar's breast. Had he then been guilty of inconsiderate blindness on his stepfather's daughter's aecount?

"You do not surely mean that I have, or am likely to cause her one moment's uneasiness or pain? Oh! Gwendoline, if this really were the case, I should never forgive myself. If only for her sake who loved her so well, and to whom Edith was ever an affectionate daughter, I would not for the world that she suffered one heartache through my means. No, I should be much distressed," he continued, less impetuously, "if Edith felt for me any thing but what I could adequately reciprocate. My stepfather, too, it would be but a poor return for all his kindness; but you must, I think, be mistaken. Edith has not given you any definite reason to suppose such a thing?" he anxiously inquired.

"That of course she would not do," was Gwendoline's reply: "I only judge from what she betrays involuntarily."

"Then what am I to do?" he asked, with agitation. "Mr. Gibson has just been proposing we should all go to Malta, returning to England together. Edith seems as unwilling as any one to part from your company, which would hardly be the case if she suspected any thing of the truth concerning you."

"I do not know that," Gwendoline answered; then, after a minute's thought, she said, "Well, let it be so, if they wish it. I may, indeed, be glad of your extra support, and of Mr. Gibson's countenance at

Malta, in keeping in order that dreadful foreigner, who has my poor friend so completely in his power."

Perhaps she had hardly recognized herself the jealous reluctance which possessed her, to part from Edgar at this juncture-to see him go from her with the Gibsons, with the interest of Edith's newly

discovered, unsisterly love fresh upon him, and the veil of mystery and of concealment still unlifted from her own position, preventing the full and entire assurance which, with all his strong affection, all his noble confidence in her truth and purity of actions, alone could satisfy one like Edgar, so sensitive to the least shadow and appearance of evil.

EDGAR began to watch Edith with affectionate solicitude, anxious to discover that Gwendoline's suggestion was not true-that he could still pursue, without reserve or misgiving, the same brotherly course as before; and even Gwendoline could not but admire the womanly bravery with which Edith, now her eyes were opened, bore the ordealhow, without any of that heroism of mistaken self-sacrifice which falsely supported poor weak Bona in her self-made trials, the delicate and tenderly nurtured clergyman's daughter envisagée-d her trial. Quieter she might be, or less demonstrative in her appreciation of Edgar's society, but that was all the difference he could discover. She seemed to like the idea of seeing Malta, though her enthusiasm for foreign travel might appear considerably abated, and she spoke with calm, almost longing satisfaction now of going back to Seacombe, and of the responsible useful duties which, as her father's (now alas !) only assistant, would await her there; listening with interest to the information the Fieldens, and Gwendoline more particularly, could so lly afford her, as to the condition

and requirements of the school and of the village, whilst Edgar, to whom one tranquil spot there was so sadly sacred, almost envied her, whose lot it would be to dwell and minister so near it.

The day before they were to start for Malta, there came a sharp, sad shock of self-reproach to Gwendoline, for having allowed herself to be delayed and diverted from the completion of her journey, through the distracting power of other influences.

A letter which had been forwarded from Seacombe to Naples, as they had desired all correspondence up to a certain date should be, occasioned her much pain and sorrow.

The letter was from Paoli himself, and thus abruptly and briefly worded:

knowing the torture this communication would inflict upon her as he penned these cold-blooded lines. She could only hope he had purposely exaggerated his statement; but then, must not the case have been desperate which could have moved him to summon her at all?

The Fieldens also were much concerned, but Gwendoline could hardly endure Mr. Fielden's sympathies with patience. Was it not for his sake that Bona had sacrificed herself? Her poor Bona, whom she in her pride of strength and superiority had loved for her very clinging weakness and helpless dependency, before she knew or recognized another different love of woman's nature, which even now at times she scorned herself for having allowed to take her own higher heart by storm; Bona, whom she had purposed once by her protective power, to shield so tenderly from life's contrarieties and man's overbearing pride, killed perhaps by all that she had endured from that wicked man, from whom she had felt herself powerless to save her.

She felt it strongly, yet it was not in her nature to give way to her feelings, therefore she made very little outward demonstration during the voyage to Malta of the pain and sorrow she was enduring. She was only a little paler, more cold and sternly indrawn-to Mr. Fielden, and to Edgar especially; the one so directly connected with poor Bona's fate, the other she could hardly have explained why, in her unreasonable bitterness, except that he was one of that overbearing race of which Paoli formed a member, and had usurped that place in her affections she had dedicated to pure friendship, so far as to make her Bona's heavy and prior claims on her consideration, for a

over now she thought-this weak bewitchment which had influenced her in enervating Italy. If Bona died, she would dedicate herself sternly once again to the general duties of life-to the cause of her injured sex more particularly-and already in imagination she had yielded Edgar to Edith Edith, whose love was of that weak, womanly stuff which she could never stoop to; what she had felt must have been a sickness, and it was over. So she persuaded herself, and sat in pale isolation, her eyes fixed on all the panoramic scenes of incomparable beauty and magnificence, with which this Mediterranean passage from Naples to Malta presents to us, grieving inwardly for Bona.

Skirting the fertile and mountainous shores of lovely Sicily, fanned by the softest and freshest breezes, with its quick succession of variety of striking beauty, its wealth of scent, of hue, of sunshine, and the vessel gliding gently in and out of gulfs, and straits, and harbors, on a sea of brightest azure, giving fairy-like glimpses of sights and scenes, realizing the poet's most delicious dream or painter's imagination what a time for lovers with their hearts at ease, with nothing strange, or dark, or fanciful between them, to mar the witchery!

Edgar respected Gwendoline's natural anxiety and sorrow for her friend, though from what he had gathered of her case, and her weak persistence in the matter of her marriage, she seemed scarcely worthy of Gwendoline's strong devotion. And he could not but slightly resent the cold discouragement his unobtrusive sympathy encountered. He, who if she was free to love him at all, could only be satisfied with the first and paramount position in her consideration, might at least

have been allowed a place at her side, and shared her silent appreciation of all that was bright and beautiful around them.

Mr. Gibson, only-exempted apparently from the general banfound his sympathy properly responded to. She answered his questions relating to the particulars of her friend's marriage, suppressing only the unfortunate infatuation which had led her to all this.

He shook his head gravely.

"An unfortunate case, a most unfortunate one,” he said. 'Not the first of the sort I have heard of. An unprincipled foreigner, to her misery and misfortune, poor young woman, making his way under false pretences into the good graces of an inexperienced girl, deprived of her natural guardians and protectors. I presume that your friend is an orphan."

"No," Gwendoline replied, "she has both father and mother, but was removed from their care in early life and brought up by a grandmother; the fortune she subsequently inherited, being left her under strict provision that she was to live independently of her family; her father having unfortunately squandered his own fortune, and living under straitened circumstances abroad, it was thought better thus to secure the daughter's portion for her own separate advantage."

"A pity, a great pity, even for such a reason, to separate a child from the interest of the parents; far better that her fortune should have been diverted from its intended course, and spent on her own belongings, than that she should have fallen a prey to this foreign demon. Depend upon it, my dear Miss Lawson, young ladies are ever safest and best, in almost every case, under natural care and authority.'

"But," she responded, kindling,

"Bona would have been safe with me; this terrible thing had never happened, had we continued as we began, on leaving Brompton alone together.".

Indeed?" Mr. Gibson rejoined, rather incredulously. "I should have imagined the position of two unprotected ladies of your ages, one of still greater insecurity."

"You are mistaken then," she replied, confidently. "I could have taken care of Bona as long as there was no one to interfere with us; it was our association with others which brought this misfortune on her."

"You mean with the Fieldens. Fielden was, indeed, to blame in giving this foreigner any encouragement at Seacombe; it was truly the introduction of a wolf amongst lambs," the Vicar of Seacombe added reprehensively, thinking of his rustic, unsophisticated parishoners, whilst visions, perhaps of his own daughter being made even possibly liable by this one fatal instance, to a similar contingency, of the desecration of their retired English residence, by such another character, curdled his fatherly blood with horror. He should forbid Mrs. Tarrant, at the Post Office, on pain of his serious displeasure, to let her bedroom again to any kind of foreigner.

But Gwendoline, unwilling to disadvantage the Fieldens in Mr. Gibson's eyes, remarked that it was indeed incautious of Mr. Fielden, but that it was part of his character to be too easily worked on by plausible pretences, that the foreigner had succeeded effectually in deceiving him, whilst she and his wife even, had never been a moment disarmed of their prejudice.

"A fact which does credit to you ladies; to your penetration and good sense," Mr. Gibson courteously

responded; "a pity that your poor friend had not abided by your judgment."

"Ah, yes! she yielded to others; to so-called strangers' higher influences, and was lost," Gwendoline rejoined bitterly.

"Rather from what you gave me to understand, to her own weak, feminine rashness," Mr. Gibson remarked sententiously, not understanding the drift of her allusion. "She wanted the authority of a father or brother to restrain and protect her from her own self-ruin."

"Of a good father, certainly," acceded Gwendoline, "but I still maintain that Bona would have been safe and happy now, but for the incautious rashness of a brother-and Mr. Fielden."

"In short, you mean to infer," Mr. Gibson rejoined with a smile, "but for any masculine interference she would have done well; why, my dear Miss Lawson, according to your creed, young ladies of your poor friend's weak nature would be safe only in some conventual retreat, with yourself of course as Lady Superior, and I am afraid after my friend Fielden's behavior, with the rule that no father confessor even ' on pain of death, should be allowed to enter,' stringently enforced," the clergyman concluded, attempting a tone of playful pleasantry, kindly intended to divert his fair companion from her brooding anxiety. But Gwendoline in her lion mood was not to be diverted; she answered quite earnestly

"You are mistaken, Mr. Gibson; I am no advocate for conventual separation or retirement. Quite the contrary. I only desire a different state of things, as regards ourselves and our position, than there exists at present, but which I suppose we shall arrive at no sooner, than until that happy time and condition come

to pass, when no lion or ravening beast shall be there to hurt us."

Which meant, Mr. Gibson supposed, no foreign Counts or at the time of the millennium; but at present seeing no chance of either such desirable consummation, the more matter-of-fact clergyman thought the sooner Miss Lawson became the wife of some quiet commonsense man, who would curb her wild and brainless fancies, and reduce her and her sex to a proper level in her own estimation, the better both for her own sake, and the weaker sisterhood brought under her influ

ence.

As for Edgar, Mr. Gibson still hugged the secret hope that he might not be that happy man. He was too young, too imaginative himself to act the part of lion-tamer; better for him, his pure violet Edith, who, if less strong-minded, was more right-headed than this handsome, influential sunflower, with her aqua marina eyes and wavy light hair, tangling men's hearts whilst she only despised them. And yet he was fain to own that such mere frothy talk in which she but seldom indulged, was not to be much regarded, and that in all his practised experience, a more right-minded person-one more fitted to guide man or woman through the shoals and quicksands of life—

"To comfort, counsel, or command,"

he had never met with than in the person of this brilliant blonde with all her grand ideas.