they happen to be such as he approves of also, unless his avocations call him pretty much from home. Then, indeed, the favoured friend may approach: but, under such circumstances, her society is rather smuggled than allowed; and the wife, and her ally, if possessed of any feelings of delicacy, generally prefer to such an alternative, the worthy old plan of letting things take their course; a course which not unfrequently ends, in the dissolution, after marriage, of the strongest friendships that were instituted previous to it.

Mrs. St. Aubyn had still a tender interest in all that concerned Matilda, though her feelings were hurt in what she considered her neglect, and her pride was wounded, in what she openly termed the ill-behaviour of Mr. Harcourt. At this period they had not met for many months; and Matilda, with the utmost grief perceiving that she could do nothing to ameliorate the matter, was compelled to wait for time and chance to give her an opportunity of justifying, as well as she could, her seeming neglect of so valued a friend. She every day anticipated the return of Mr. St. Aubyn from the Continent, and the certainty of his calling upon her when he came to town; and to that circumstance she looked forward for her time of explanation. But his stay abroad was protracted beyond her expectations. She had been a wife nearly two years, and still no intelligence of his arrival. Charles, in the mean time, was proceeding in the same course of thoughtless gaiety; and there could not but be moments, when a melancholy idea of having sacrificed herself in marriage, would steal across her thoughts. When every fond

endeavour to retain her husband from the idle amusements which absorbed him, failed to influencewhen the book she would have read, the song she would have sung to him, the smiles with which she would have detained him by her side, though prevailing, perhaps, for an occasional hour, were yet no stable, no enduring attraction, she could not but heave a sigh as she thought of past days of elegant and enlightened intercourse-and almost wish that those days had not been so heedlessly-so rapidly resigned.

Not that Matilda was a deserted wife, in the common acceptation of the term. Charles was not so passionately in love with her as he had been; but he was still as strongly attached to her, as it was in his nature to be to any thing he had called his own for two years. But she discovered, when too late, that she had joined her fate with one, of a character, which, of all others (not disgraced by any flagrant vice) is that most calculated to give pain to those connected with it. An austere, or a violent, or a passionate temper, may be accessible, and very commonly is, on the side of sensibility and virtue; but nothing good is within the reach of an unthinking mind. The spirits that would always be gay, always be plunged in a vortex of dissipation, in a world. where, on every side, objects for reflection solicit our attention, and seem to intreat our consideration, present the most hopeless of materials for the reformist to work upon.

"I see that there is no hope of him!" said Matilda sorrowfully, one day, after they had just returned from an expensive tour on the Continent, not

from the quiet watering-place, where she had hoped to have composed her own mind; and in some degree improved his, by an interval of quiet and reflection ; "I am afraid there is no hope of him! and she laid down, one after the other, a pile of unpaid bills, which greeted her eye upon his library-table, whither she went to search for a letter she was going to answer. Her heart was unusually heavy; for the consequences of his past imprudence were beginning now to threaten and disturb him. Creditors, who, for two years, had been obsequious, and even servile, began to be importunate and troublesome. Applications for money were much oftener made than answered; and Charles, teazed by these harrassing and degrading demands, became irritable and impatient; sometimes almost unkind in his deportment at home-abroad he was still the same, good-humoured, sprightly, and happy. Abroad, therefore, he was now generally to be found; and Matilda, dreading solitude, and trembling at the possibility of being found, at his return home, dissolved in tears (for what but tears could her solitary meditations supply?) compelled herself to accompany him in every proposal he had made for visiting or amusement. It was a painful, it was a revolting manner to her, of passing away her time; that time once so precious-once so improved by refined and enlightened intercourse-that time to be frittered away at theatres and assemblies, in unmeaning-ah! worse than unmeaning pursuits! it was a thought which it agonised her to dwell upon.

"But what can I do?" she repeated, and as she spoke she involuntarily raised her eyes to heaven.

"He is my husband! I would not forsake him—I would persuade him if I could-I am young-I am ignorant”—and the clasped hands and fast falling tears told how fervently she supplicated for better guidance than her own.

From this deep and painful abstraction she was recalled by hearing a knock at the hall-door, which seemed to announce a visitor, though it was yet rather an early hour for a call of ceremony; concluding, however, that it might be some one of her husband's numerous friends, who, on hearing he was not at home, would not come in, she was not alarmed as she would have been at such a signal, had she imagined it threatened her with being surprised by company, at a moment when she was in appearance and reality so unfit for it.

It was, therefore, with surprise and consternation, that she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, and tried to summon up a smile, when rapidly approaching steps, and the hasty opening of the library-door, informed her of the aetual approach of she did not know whom, indeed, (for in her hurry to make the best of her appearance, she lost the name the servant pronounced) but, at any rate, of some one who would be astonished to find her with such vestiges of grief about her. But faint was the astonishment of the person who arrived, compared with hers, as her eyes rested upon a form, changed indeed since last she looked upon it, but still a dear and welcome form-for it was the form of St. Aubyn!

The pleasure which the first sight of him inspired, gave place in a moment to a pang the most agonising, as the idea "he comes to congratulate me as a

happy wife-and what-what does he find me!" struck upon her heart. Nevertheless, she called a smile upon her pallid countenance, and hastened to meet his extended hand.

"I find you well, I trust!" was his hesitating, anxious inquiry; and he tried to speak with firmnesshe tried to compose his agitated features-but his hand trembled to an excess which compelled him to resign her's, almost without touching it; and he could not venture immediately to say more. Matilda on her part, was scarcely less embarrassed, though with different emotions. Her terror arose from the possibility, before so dear and confidential a friend, of being betrayed into a word that might implicate the misconduct of her husband, or her own unfortunate lot as the partner of his fate.

She hastened to turn his fixed attention from herself by inquiring after his mother: yet here she felt embarrassed. A consciousness of seeming to have neglected the duties of friendship, impeded the frank affectionate expressions she had been accustomed to use in speaking of her. Yet could she not, in justice to herself, forbear from attempting to exculpate her conduct.

"I fear Mrs. St. Aubyn must have misinterpreted

I fear I must seem to have been neglectful—” she began with hesitation to say, but St. Aubyn instantly interrupted her:

"You had other duties to fulfil, my dear Mrs. Harcourt," he said, in accents of tenderness, which forcibly recalled to Matilda how often, in former days, that gentle voice had soothed away every regret, which the thought of her fate and situation (rigid