He never came again into the hall during the week that the children stayed.

The face of Kitty was working with various emotions during this scene, of which, of course, she understood very little; that grandpapa grandpapa, a very awful person in her eyes—was angry with the poor little boy, was to her the terrible circumstance of the case. Yet, with that instinct of justice, which I have mentioned as so natural to children, she felt sure he had not deserved it.

Children feel morally before they think. Her little face was quite piteous. Mr. Chandos, dropping Calantha's arm, took his little darling in his arms to comfort her.

She laid her little head upon his breast, as if she wanted comfort very much.

She soon, however, lifted it up again, and looking at her father, said, interrogatively and doubtfully,

"He wasn't a naughty boy, though, papa?”

No, my darling. He did not know he was not to come into the hall; he went away, you see, as soon as he was bid."

CHAPTER V.

“Loving she is, and tractable though wild;
And Innocence hath privilege in her
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes,
And feats of cunning.

...

Light are her sallies as the tripping fawn's,

Forth startled from the fern where he lay couch'd.”
WORDSWORTH.

LUCILLA was not to be moved from her opinion even by her father. She attacked him upon the subject with the utmost freedom; and he had to defend himself by being as brief and obstinate upon his side as she was clamorous and positive upon hers.

Calantha looked distressed and tired; Mr. Chandos wearied and disconcerted. The time had long since gone by when the sparkling beauty of the fair speaker's eyes, the dazzling lustre of her heightened complexion, or the animation of her bright countenance, could atone

for the want of softness in her voice and gentleness in her manners. The time was also past when the right which often did lie at the foundation of her opinions could atone in his eyes for the unreasonable and dictatorial manner with which they were enunciated. They who are found to be as positive when they are mistaken as when they chance to be right, will soon find their opinions regarded by others as the mere effect of chance.

Caprice was the word Mr. Chandos had long mentally affixed to the cause and origin of Lucilla's proceedings; and though severe, he was but too strictly just. Once delivered from the magic delusion of his passion, he measured her qualities with an unbiassed eye. He found, alas! in her, whom all the world conspired to praise as so clever, so generous, so good-natured, and so kind, a character influenced either by caprice, love of power, or the desire to make a sensation, as it is called; possessing a head certainly not wanting in a certain cleverness, and a heart rather careless than bad. The good-nature, which every one else praised, arose, as he saw it, from a self

VOL. II.

G

opinion which could not be mortified, joined to the satisfaction of being always the prominent figure in every society she entered, and from the pleasure she took in the exercise of power, which every act of her so-called good-nature supposed. How easy it is to appear good-natured when the spirits are high, health invulnerable, and means abundant !

He missed the influence of higher principles, he longed for those finer sensibilites-that delicate perception of a single-hearted benevolence which discovers and relieves the real sufferings of others.

There was a coarseness and hardness in her very good-nature; no sympathy, no softness, no mistrust of herself, no fear to wound while she ministered relief.

So it was with what people called her great candour. Lucilla was found almost invariably the defender of whomever, or whatsoever, was censured or condemned by others. People called it her candour, and so she called it herself; but it was a candour without discrimination, and founded on no principle. It was sufficient that

she could raise an argument in which she was sure apparently to come off triumphant, to engage her in the defence of any cause.

Apparently to come off triumphant from any debate she is certain to do who breaks through those forms of politeness which others observe, defies the laws of reasoning which others find irresistible, establishes her own assertion as authority indisputable for any fact, her own ipse dixit as warrant sufficient for the indisputable justice of any sentiment or opinion an abundant flow of words at command, and one of the handsomest faces and persons ever seen. resist such an accumulation of

Who can

powers?

has

Judicious reasoners withdrew in silence from a contest in which the plainest rules of right reasoning were set at defiance; the timid yielded to a force they could not resist; while the injudicious many were convinced by the boldness of her assertions, or overwhelmed by the loudness of her voice, or dazzled by the brightness of her eyes. Many were found base enough to choose to believe that what the rich, powerful, talented, beautiful