He held her from him; and gazed with the delight of earlier times.

"How well she looked! how lovely! how gay! What have you been doing with yourself, my sweet one, while I have been away? Ah! little traitress! is it thus you mourn an absent lover?"

"This was my consolation," said the enraptured Louisa, snatching up her child, and bringing it, her face beaming with pride and pleasure, to its father.

He stooped down to caress it.

But the child turned away, pushed the stranger from it, with that usual frank determination, and buried its face in its mother's neck.

"It is papa, my darling !"

The child lifted up its head, gazed gravely at the stranger, and turned away again.

Lord William was struck with the expression of its countenance.

"You are a very fine little girl, however," said he, with an accent of admiration; "and I do not like you the less for knowing already how to resent neglect. I think this is the first time I ever had the honour of addressing my Princess Royal. Let me kiss your hand."

No-the child was obstinate, and refused even the slightest mark of condescension.

"Take her away, nurse," said Lord William. He felt it, though he laughed. "Let her be taught her duty better."

"Oh, fy, Miss Melville," said the queen regent of the nur. sery, who now advanced in all her dignity from the anteroom, where, much to her indignation, she was commonly exiled by Louisa, while playing with her child and its real nurse, or foster mother-"Oh, fy, fy, Miss Melville, not to know your own papa!-I beg pardon, my lord-but I am shocked, Miss Melville!-I hope you will not blame me, my lord; but really the child is very extraordinary for so young a one."

"It seems to have no extraordinary love for you, however, nurse. Why does it scream so horribly when you endeavour to take it from Lady William? For Heaven's sake, Louisa, send the vixen away!"

And the young lady, in a roar of passion, was separated from its reluctant mother, and carried off by Mrs. Wily. "And how many hours of each day, Louisa, do you spend in this delectable society ?" said her disgusted husband. All the enchantment of the scene at once dissolved.

"It is not always such society," said Louisa, struck with what had passed; her heart, in spite of the mortification she felt, yearning with a vehemence of passion, which a mother alone can understand, at this exhibition of feeling and strength of character united.

CHAPTER XVII.

LORD WILLIAM had returned from his expedition, full of health, spirits, and good humour; and he was well pleased to find his wife ready to receive him, with a colour upon her cheek, and an animation in her eye and voice, which he had not lately witnessed.

It was true, as her husband had remarked, she did look lovely and well. His absence had restored that bloom to Louisa's cheek, which the irritation of his presence had well nigh destroyed.

Distant, she had reconciled herself to the solitude of her heart, and had become, in some measure, consoled for the disappointment of one sentiment, by the ineffable delight of that other-that still sweeter, still tenderer. But present, not even this could subdue the vain, restless longings for some marks of affection, renewed in all its bitterness; as in a few days she saw him gradually decline in his attentions, and become once more absorbed in his numerous engagements.

Those vain wishes for his society-those ever rising, ever disappointed hopes that he would come-that he would be there that he would say this-that he would do that, were revived with a pain as irritating and consuming as that which tormented her before. Once more the fluttering heart sent the colour too hastily to her cheek. Again the sadness not communicated; the counterfeited smile; the hidden pang exhausted the powers of life.

At first she had been flattered by some faint renewal of former happiness. Novelty for a moment had restored the truant to her feet.

He visited her more frequently in her apartments; he was polite, gentle, and gay; he drove her out once or twice in the parks in her low phaeton; he had even been seen in her opera box; he had noticed her; he had seemed to take some enjoyment in her society. Again her tender heart opened to the hope of happiness; again she tasted those short moments of ineffable joy, that brightened with their short fitful moments her dark wintry days.

Many months these restless alternations of pain and bliss lasted; but at length they ceased altogether.

Suddenly, and without explanation, Lord William seemed to have taken a positive disgust to home. He scarcely ever appeared in his own house; he never, on any occasion, entered his wife's apartment. When she saw him, it was in the common receiving rooms, and that rarely; for he seemed to

have lost his taste for the company of his friends; gave few of his usual parties, and when he did was restless, absent, and uneasy.

The cause of this change was soon known to the gossiping world.

One of those syrens, upon whom nature, for the destruction of mankind, has lavished her choicest gifts, while art has added her most precious advantages, appeared upon the boards of the opera this season.

It is needless to enlarge upon rare attractions, beauty, genius, and a voice, to whose tones the most insensible could not listen without emotion. To these were added a heart; at least vehement feelings, and passions generous in their way.

All London at her feet, she had made her own selection; and, cruel to all others, was herself the slave of Lord William. Fortune-title-the most advantageous offers-marriagerank-luxury-a home for the wanderer-considerationplace, dignity, all, had been offered repeatedly, and all had been refused for him-and he knew it.

Here was passion! here was excitement!

Food for his imagination-claims upon his gratitude-he fancied, upon his honour.

What were the vulgar rights of a wife to all this?-less than nothing.

Jealous in her attachments-exalted in her ideas-exacting in her affections, the devoted Italian claimed a full return for the preference she gave; and the beautiful wife, who had been seen but to be dreaded, was placed under the ban of exclusion.

"Go to her, if you will; trample out my heart, it is yours, yours only; yours ever! I can die, I will die, when the light of that heavenly eye, when those melting looks are turned from me, and given-good heavens-given to another ... But you are right, you are quite right-she is your wife -go to her-forget me-for by the heaven of heavens I will not share with her. She is soft, lovely, enchanting; I am dark, harsh, uninviting. Leave me if you will. Despair is reckless. I care not-but, once abandoned, I swear by that pure love, which your perfidy has blackened, never will I see the light of day more.'

"If thousands like her perished, it were a small sacrifice to thee, thou Cleopatra, thou dark Egyptian, thou witch, thou enchantress, thou idol of my inmost soul."

Such were the words which Louisa heard.

It was in the Kensington gardens, now deserted by the caprice of fashion. She was to have an immense and splendid party at her own house that night; and, wearied with anxiety and disappointment at the prolonged indifference of her husband, faint and sick, for her health began once more to fail under the griefs of her mind, she had entered alone

to endeavour to gain refreshment and composure for the duties of the evening.

It was her husband's voice-she could not for one moment doubt it. She stood still-not to listen-not with design-but because all the blood froze in her veins, and she literally could not move.

Innocent was her heart-innocent had been her habitsher early friends all virtuous and pure. The idea of her husband's infidelity had never once entered into her mind as a possibility-She stood aghast, as if a yawning gulf had opened under her feet, and swallowed all she loved and prized.

She shuddered at his guilt-she shrank from his treachery —anguish and disgust, at once struggled in her bosom. How she left the gardens she never knew; but she did not faint; the voices retreated, and she got home.

Could she doubt ?-Alas! it was impossible. She had seen them leave the gardens together-she had seen Lord William, with that attitude of devotion which she but too well remembered-attending-and upon another!

That night the magnificent apartments of Melville House were brilliantly lighted. Gay were the innumerable flowers that decked those splendid walls and staircases; pleasant was the soft perfume that filled the air; fair and young were they who trod those painted floors; loud and triumphant was the sounding music, which the unrivalled military bands poured upon the ear: all was grandeur, festivity, pomp, luxury, and pride.

Where was the mistress of the radiant scene?

She was there, her face and hands pale as statuary marble -her siken hair plain and unornamented, braided above those eyes those eyes! whose deep and dark expression betrayed to the few, with capacity to read, the sorrow of her soul to the crowd she was merely as the unrufffed stream which hides, by its calmness, the fatal depths below.

The gravity, the dignity, the composure of her air imposed upon most for pride. Many disliked her that night; more envied; one or two pitied her. One or two saw that her heart was crushed. It was crushed-it was broken on that fatal day, and it never beat in measured time afterward.

This incident happened late in the summer; after that they went down to Brighton, where they wintered.

The winter was cold, raw, and unhealthy, and Louisa's cough was short and frequent.

CHAPTER XVIII.

In the mean time the little girl had continued to advance in vigour, beauty, and spirits, and repaid the mother's devotion, with an excess of attachment, rare at any age; yet perhaps less rare in those early years than may at first be supposed.

The heart of childhood is warm, and the almost passionate attachment of which young children are capable, is very often unnoted by those around them.

It is astonishing how early the reason and sensibility of a child, the object of much and well-directed attention, will be developed. In this instance the advance was proportionate to the peculiar care and fondness which had been bestowed. And the forlorn heart of the mother already found support and consolation in the excessive love of the little girl.

Lord William, in spite of the laxity of his principles upon such points, living under the perpetual consciousness of having injured and of still injuring his wife, appeared entirely to have changed his nature-from easy he had become ill-tempered-from candid and polite, unjust and rude.

Her unexampled gentleness, united with the signs of decay and suffering which it was impossible to conceal, irritated him beyond measure. Every time she coughed he felt it as a reproach to himself; every time her palpitating heart denied to her frame the power of motion, or the languid accents betrayed the weakness within, he felt upbraided and he felt angry; while the child, never the object of much affection, became absolutely disagreeable to him; for, with a strange instinct, as if to avenge the mother's wrongs, it persisted in repulsing the father, while it lavished every demonstration of the most unbounded fondness upon Louisa.

A summer and a spring, spent as before, had ripened it to four years, to a thing of expression and energy, often mistaken; often misdirected; but always warm, generous, and sincere. The object of Miss Melville's most passionate aversion was Mrs. Wily, and Mrs. Wily returned the compliment. She hated both the mother and child; for she knew that Louisa had spared no pains, and did spare no pains, to supplant her. But supported by the marchioness, and no one knows why, by Lord William, except that, ill-humoured and capricious, he chose to do that which Louisa disliked, she maintained her place.

This feud with Mrs. Wily added vehemence to the little girl's passionate love for her mother. A love, indeed, en