affection, hurried down-stairs, leaving the clergyman to confront the other ladies' not very cheering countenances the sorrowful reproach upon his wife's, the mingled contempt. and indignation depicted on his handsome boarder's face.

"Come, ladies," he said, with his usual assured and unembarrassed mien, "I cannot stand these black looks; Miss Lawson, I believe you have not even shaken hands with me since your arrival."

And advancing across the threshold, he held out his hand to the young lady, who could scarcely refuse to extend her fingers in return.

"I hope you do not imagine that I in any way encourage what is now going on down-stairs. I declare to you I used all my powers of persuasion to induce the poor little thing to pause, before she irrevocably implicated herself with this Count; but I assure you she is as obstinately determined to play the great lady at Malta, and seat me on some imaginarv Papal chair therethere-as

"Mr. Fielden, this is no joking matter," interrupted Gwendoline. "You know very well you are the original cause of this unfortunate infatuation on her part, that if she marries this man, it will be your fault. Who but you have countenanced, nay abetted him, from the beginning? I will not argue any more on the subject. To succeed in preventing this affair going further, would be the one only atonement you could make."

"You are very hard upon me,” the clergyman replied, with a shrug of his shoulders, and a mock penitence of tone. "I must submit to your judgment, and try what I can do. Really I thought him a pretty good fellow, for a foreigner, till tonight, but the knife-scene rather frightens me for the poor 'piccolina's' future fate. But then he is a

"I have been even more startled since I came up-stairs, Ambrose," Mrs. Fielden responded, feebly, "by what I have heard; that you have secretly received money, and that to a considerable amount from Miss Lynde."

"Ah! she told you, did she? Well, well."

And the clergyman, who had been leaning carelessly against a chest of drawers, pleasantly employed in the contemplation of Gwendoline's countenance, more handsome even than usual in its pale, wearied vexation, now stood up, rather taken by surprise, and really for the moment silent and embarrassed.

"I thought I told you from the first that it would never come to good-that for us in our position. to join ourselves with strangers, was most undesirable both for their sakes and for our own," continued Mrs. Fielden plaintively.

"Good gracious, Harriet !" Mr. Fielden interposed, rallying from his discomfiture, the more quickly, perhaps, as he perceived on Gwendoline's countenance no such utter condemnation on this point. She was herself as free and openhanded with regard to money as the day. "Where was the harm? When a man has two bailiffs at his shoulder, he's not likely to stand on his P's and Q's. A pretty thing, to have let myself be marched off to Exeter jail, with all the little boys and dogs of Seacombe at my heels, when a generous girl was standing by, thrusting bank notes by dozens into the wretches' hands. Of course I gave her a receipt; she is at liberty to demand it at her will."

"Oh! as for that, sufficient for the day, etc.; and now, Mrs. Fielden, let me suggest that you worry Miss Lawson no more to-night with your dismal fancies. She looks tired to death."

"Good-night, Mrs. Fielden," Gwendoline rejoined kindly, "and pray do not make yourself unhappy or uneasy, as far as the money is concerned, either for the present or the future. You look indeed quite worn out, but of course we cannot go to bed till Bona returns. To think of her with that man downstairs!"

"Oh! don't make yourself uneasy about that. I'll go now and break up the lovers' confab. course I must see the illustrious Count locked out."

Of

And the clergyman, relieved to have got off so easily with Gwendoline, insisted now on giving her hand a parting shake, and returned down-stairs, where as the best and safest way of interrupting the tête-àtête without giving offence to his irascible guest, he opened the halldoor, and began to smoke a cigar.

His purpose was gained the parlor-door opened, and poor, pale little Bona, with a crushed, scared look, glided out, and up the stairs, and was soon followed by Paoli, who joined Fielden in the hall.

Whatever had been the manner of her lover's warning during that interview; whether threats, caresses,

the means employed, they had certainly been effectual. She returned to Gwendoline no more that night; indeed, as if to render a second meeting impossible, having reached with noiseless steps her little room, she stealthily drew the bolt across the door that separated them; not so softly, however, but that Gwendoline's anxiously listening ear had heard the sound; the action sending a bitter pang to her heart. It seemed, indeed, as if Bona had voluntarily shut herself out from all her guardian care and affection for the future, and the two men's voices and footsteps were heard for some time after on the gravel walk below; then, bidding each other a friendly "au revoir," the foreigner departed to his sleeping-place, and Fielden, gayly humming a popular air, returned into the house.

We doubt whether there could be much peaceful sleep beneath that roof during the remainder of the night.

"I wish mine eyes

Would with themselves shut up my thoughts,"

might well have been the burden of the uneasy reflections of this quartette during the dark hours of restlessness. To all those interested in the plot, thus so boldly enacting before their eyes, how could any one of them calmly lay his or her head upon the pillow, unhaunted by misgivings so very inimical to calm repose !

THERE was nothing, therefore, to be done. Bona, through Mrs. Fielden, informed Gwendoline the next morning, that she had given Paoli a solemn promise, the night before, to marry him the week after her twenty-first birthday, only three weeks hence, and that, seeing now the act was inevitable, it would be only kindness on all their parts, to refrain from continuing a system of dissuasion, which could only grieve

and distress her.

"Tell Gwen," said she, "that I shall never love any one as I have loved her. No 1-in spite of what, in my madness, I said about your husband, that feeling, wicked or innocent, as you may please to call it, is only too real, as it exists at present; but that may, I feel, pass away-my love for her, never. Tell her this; and you, Mrs. Fielden, why should you care"-changing her tone to one less gentle—“ care to prevent my marrying whom I will? Without any reference to Mr. Fielden, to be rid of me could only be in your favor. Gwendoline, whom you love and admire, as much as you must despise me, will be all yours then-your friend and champion to support and help you, as she once was mine."

And the wretched girl, in a paroxysm of jealous misery now on her friend's account, ran sobbing from the room on hearing Paoli's approach.

Could Gwendoline have seen and heard all this, might she not have yet made another effort, and possibly have prevailed? But they had not

met in private since last night, and Mrs. Fielden deemed it useless, the further distressing her dear Miss Lawson's mind by any thing but the first part of Bona's message to her friend. If truth must be told, the clergyman's wife did begin to lose. much of the unselfish interest in Bona's case. After all, if this very weak and unsatisfactory young person, who had been so silly as to fall in love with her husband, would persist, against all their earnest persuasions and endeavors, in marrying this foreigner, with his violent temper, and, no doubt, false pretensions, who would she have to blame but herself? If her obstinacy did not cause them to lose Gwendoline, Mrs. Fielden would be almost glad. What had her companionship been to them but a trouble and vexation throughout? A girl who could fall in love with a married man, one who gave her no encouragement either (so the poor wife chose to regard it)—to say the least, in that foolish manner-would be better, indeed, married as quickly as possible, and out of the way.

And a faint gleam of hope had been opened to her by Gwendoline's words last night, respecting her husband's debt to Bona, that Gwendoline would not desert or separate herself from them, even if this marriage did take place. She had professed regard for her, and even regard based on pity-humiliating, under some circumstances, from this good angel for so did she look upon Gwendoline-was inexpressibly sweet and comforting-pre

cious, strengthening balm indeed to the heart of the care worn, neverconsidered clergyman's wife.

A new vista of hope and happiness seemed opening before her a shield of defence against every danger and difficulty, as long as she remained her friend; so she troubled herself little more about Bona's matrimonial determination; felt a secret fear, indeed, now, that it should not take place, for then it would be next to impossible that they should keep Gwendoline.

Alas such is the inherent selfishness of every man and woman at the best!

As for Gwendoline, Bona's message, as Mrs. Fielden delivered it, completed her unhappiness on her friend's account, but gave her no surprise. She had said all that the tenderest and strongest affection could suggest to deter her from selfruin. She plainly would not be deterred. All that remained to her was to write one more letter to Mr. Lawson, placing the matter before him in the most urgent light-a representation strangely unattended to; and Gwendoline had nothing left to do but to stand by and see the end.

Others in her situation might have refused to do any such thing, at once have left Seacombe, abandoning the ungrateful friend-who had so cast off all regard for her opinion to her self-chosen fate. But Gwendoline's friendship was not of this sert. She could not bring herself to remove her care and aid from Bona even now; as long as it were possible she would continue to watch over her; nay, for her own satisfaction, endeavor to extract some gleam of light and comfort from what she so hated, and by gaining further insight into Bona's intended husband's character, acquire some less doubtful as

surance as to the true nature of his circumstances and position of life.

To this effect, hard as it was to command her patience sufficiently, as she must submit to the trial of his close and constant presence in their daily domestic life, for Paoli from this time never left his betrothed's society during the day longer than he could help,-she did endeavor to be at least more civil to the Count in her manner, and to show forth her antagonism less plainly; therefore he, quick to observe the change, reassured and mollified himself thereby, pleased at the idea, perhaps, that his system of intimidation had succeeded, threw down his arms offensive and defensive, and expanded once more into the courteous, genial guest, displaying a vivacity in social converse, and a versatility of talent, from the concoction of a salad or dish of maccaroni, to the singing light songs, French, Italian, Spanish, to his own accompaniment on the piano, belonging to the house, which in the abstract might have amused and beguiled even Gwendoline out of her prejudiced dislike, but as Bona's accepted lover, only served to place the matter in a more incongruous and unpalatable light.

Paoli was essentially foreign. He had brought a foreign atmosphere into the house, and seemed as little in place by that quiet English fireside as a Spanish privateer or Italian brigand would have been. Could Bona, with her delicate nervous sensibility, endure the scent of cigars, which, rebel as Mrs. Fielden might have done at first, now unmistakably pervaded the atmosphere of the very room in which they sat?

It was odious to Gwendoline. Then the card-playing, which later in the evening, after his frothy devoirs to his betrothed and the other ladies were over, Paoli gener

ally contrived to introduce! True, the play when they were present seemed more for amusement than any thing else; the foreigner politely refusing to take the clergyman's money when he won, though when the contrary was the case, playfully casting his gold and silver at his adversary, who of course insisted on their playing on equal terms, as if the coin to him were empty dross, though his every gesture showed him an expert one, to whom the handling of the dice was as familiar as the needle Mrs. Fielden's patient fingers plied.

In short, the Glade parlor was a changed place to what it had been before Gwendoline had gone to London; and as she sat, a passive observer of the scene within, with the wintry wind which came blowing up the valley, and the rolling waves sounding in her ears, she wondered at the chances which had brought her there, and mixed her up with such company-almost wondering, too, at times, whether it could be the same Bona, once so much her own in sympathy and affection at Mrs. Mallory's school, who was now so absorbed and selfremoved in interest and thought.

So day after day passed on, but not without signs of preparation for the marriage. There was the bride elect's trousseau to be prepared a matter in which it was necessary that Bona should timidly claim the assistance of the other women-Paoli himself far from indifferent as to his intended's doing him credit, with regard to her personal appointments as his future wife.

In one expedition, indeed, that they took to Exeter on this important business, he made himself, in Gwendoline's opinion, unnecessarily and almost impertinently officious, in superintending and suggesting the nature of her purchases,

at the famous Green and Bennetts of that town.

It was a good sign, perhaps, that he did not wish her to spare any expense; especially in the matter of lace handkerchiefs, collars, and silk dresses, he was, Gwendoline thought, needlessly extravagant; showing, too, an effeminate discernment in their selection, as well as an interference in other details, which also aroused Gwendoline's contempt and disapproval. For instance, he advised that the dresses should not be made up. They should be in London for some weeks after their marriage, when all this could be accomplished far better by London dressmakers. There was some show of sense, however, in this, and it saved Gwendoline thought and trouble, which it could be little pleasure to spend in such a cause. There was no reason to suppose that Bona would suffer afterwards in any thing relating to her personal comforts. Her lover showed himself, indeed, inclined even to munificence with regard to expenditure. True, his diamond ring which had figured on Bona's finger on and before the day of her betrothal, had been very soon restored to his own, and a less costly trinket substituted in its stead; but this was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that the diamond was of such immense value, and he had soon discovered Bona's habit of leaving her rings on the washingstand, to the mercy of the housemaid's dust-cloths, or other accidental adventures.

And all this time, it seemed, from what Mr. Fielden had gleaned from the foreigner, that Mr. Lawson, in conjunction with a solicitor in Paoli's own employ, was drawing up a settlement, to be ready for signature by the time appointed.

"The Sposima's fortune for her lifetime will be well secured."