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by pain and passion together, he sank again into his easy chair.

Amherst, with whom a bodily disease, arising in a great measure from his mental sufferings, had been daily increasing during the voyage, and which the fatigue of his ride from Dover had brought to a speedy crisis, had really felt a faintness come upon him at the time his father had remarked it. He seized the moment of the Admiral's silence to explain this circumstance to him, and to assure him, that, so far from feeling dis tressed by the intelligence he had just conveyed to him, he was truly rejoiced to find that his father was at last aware of Miss Delassaux's character.

His indisposition rapidly increasing, he was compelled to entreat his father's indulgence, and to declare that he felt it necessary to retire to his apartment to endeavour to check it by taking a little repose.

Miss Margery was alarmed. "Take some of my dill-water, dear Ammy!" said she; "I'll fetch it in a moment-or some of my decoction of vervain, comfrey, and cardamums-nothing so good for keeping off faintness; or I'll get you”

"Damn your dill-water and your comfrey and

cardamums!" exclaimed the Admiral in much alarm; " if he is really ill we must send for a physician. Here, Cuddy! John! Thomas! where are ye all?" and ringing the bell like fury, the servants came running in, one by one in succession, from different parts of the old mansion, and each in his turn was dispatched a different way for medical assistance.

Amherst did all he could to prevent this, assuring his father that his illness was probably nothing more than the effects of the sea voyage, their passage from Scotland having been rough though speedy.

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Impossible !" exclaimed Sir Cable, interrupting him. "Utterly impossible, I tell ye. What! the son of a man who has lived, I may say, fifty years at sea! Pshaw, nonsense! I never had a squeamish minute at sea in my life. I took to the water from my very nest like a young wild duck-you sea sick! you may as well talk of a young Newfoundland whelp being sea sick. I tell ye sea sickness is not in the breed.

But do,

my dear boy, go to bed, for you do look confoundedly ill, that's certain. And, Margery, d'ye hear, send Mrs Glass to give the lad a warm cordial

drink, and none of your damned dill or ditchwater, d'ye hear!”

The Admiral, amidst all his violence, began at last to be really shocked by his son's appearance, which had not at first struck him so forcibly. His impatience of temper, that induced him to send express for medical advice, was most fortunate on this occasion, for it probably saved Amherst's life. A low nervous fever came on, with which he struggled many days. During great part of the time his recovery was considered by the physicians as very doubtful. Aunt Margery could do nothing but go about from room to room wringing her hands, and uttering most incoherent ejaculations. of distress and apprehension. The Admiral was in the utmost misery. He forgot the gout altogether, and, with his chair placed by his son's bedside, he watched over him with the most painful anxiety. Every moment he looked cautiously within the curtains, and when his eyes rested on the emaciated face and sunken eyeballs of his son, who, for a great part of the time, was unconscious of his father's presence, the old man would fall back in his chair in an agony of grief, which all his affected heroism of character could not disguise,

and, hiding his face with his hands, would give way to feelings too violent to be suppressed.

How eagerly would he endeavour to read the fate of his son in the eyes of his medical attendants, at each successive visit they paid him, their hopes, but much more frequently their fears, being reflected from his countenance as if from a faithful mirror.-Often was he heard to curse Brokenhurst-Hall, its inhabitants, and his own folly, for having been the cause of the sudden step his son had taken in leaving home, and exposing himself, as he believed, to some accidental contagion.

At length the disease fortunately gave way, and hope began to dawn. The difficulty now was to keep the Admiral's growing joy somewhat within bounds, to prevent any injury to the patient in his weak state. The medical men had enough to do to accomplish this; but we must now leave them to their task, that we may bring forward the history of some of the other personages of our story.

33

CHAPTER III.

She was so expensive, that the income of three dukes was not enough to supply her extravagancce.

ARBUTHNOT.

Why do they decorate themselves with artificial flowers, the various colours of herbs, needle-works of exquisite skill, quaint devices, and perfume their persons, wear inestimable riches in precious stones, crown themselves with gold and silver, use co. ronets and tiaras of various fashions, deck themselves with pendants, bracelets, ear-rings, chains, girdles, rings, pins, spangles, embroideries, ribatoes, versicular ribbands? Why do they make such glaring shows with their scarfs, feathers, fans, masks, furs, laces, tiffanies, ruffs, falls, calls, cuffs, damasks, velvets, cloth of gold, silver tissues? Such setting up with sarks, straitening with whalebone,-why, it is but as a day-net catcheth larks, to make young ones stoop to them. And when they are disappointed, they dissolve into tears, which they wipe away like sweat, weep with the one eye, laugh with the other, or, as children, weep and cry they can both together, and as much pity's to be taken of a woman weeping as of a goose going bare foot.

BURTON.

THE rumours regarding the Delassauxs which had reached the ears of Sir Cable Oakenwold soon after his son's departure for Scotland, were not

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