Lucy, too, herself but slenderly gifted with personal graces, had unconsciously taken an inventory of these things; but she was, as yet, unsoured by chasing realities and only catching shadows, and there was an expression of regret, a world of sad memories in those dark, dewy eyes, which at once made her regard the stranger with an interest as deep and compassionate as she could feel. And Helen's voice, too, though musical beyond most other voices, was so sad, and her breath came and went so rapidly, -and her colour changed as quickly as the clouds passLucy loved her at once, because she felt that she had known sorrow. Two months passed rapidly away, and Helen Lagarde was, by all parties concerned, considered as one of the family of Fairmeadows. In any other house, she would in that short space of time have won the love of every member of the family; but Lady Harden was sharp, and suspicious and worldly; possessed of one of those warped minds, which it would almost seem must see everything crooked, and one of those untamed tongues which wound where they should be most earnest to comfort. The maiden estate of her eldest daughter, who was waning into premature thinness, her hair, by the sprinkling of silver, which would not be hid, even anticipating Time,-she felt to be a reproach, and it was not to be forgiven against Helen (poor girl! innocent as the babe unborn of any designs to allure or conquer) that in the course of the two first months she had spent at Fairmeadows, she had received twice as many proposals of marriage. "She was positively magnetic," Lucy would say, playfully; "there was not a male creature who came near Fairmeadows, who did not seem, in the first half hour to know his fate, and to yield to it." And so in truth it was. Helen's first conquest, however the family physician-was not a thing to be very proud of; for that worthy, a tall, spare, neat man, with a crying voice, and an interminably prosy delivery, as regularly added another to his list of refusals, as he was called in to a new lady patient; and it was even said that in his precipitancy, he, the most precise of his sex, had thrice ignorantly thrown himself at the feet of married women. Her second was an old comrade of Sir George Harden's, for whom Alicia had screamed songs about "England's glory," till her throat was sore, and had strained her eyes till they ached in following the hieroglyphics clumsily scrawled upon paper for the enlightenment of the young ladies, which he was pleased to designate plans of campaigns: but Captain Wentworth was a bon parti. Him Helen had always avoided as much as possible :-there were things which he said that drove the blood to her heart as with the force of a thunder bolt,— names pronounced by him carelessly, which awakened all the agonies of memory. She shrunk from him with fear: and perhaps it was this very shrinking which was found attractive, for one day, to her unspeakable surprise-almost to her terror-he laid his hand, heart, and honours at her feet. Her answer was decisive beyond the possibility of appeal, and the Captain departed from Fairmeadows immediately, leaving Miss Harden's voice and eyes to recover themselves as they best might, and her mother to declare" that it was really too much to look forward to, if Miss Lagarde was to go on playing the scarecrow, and driving all their pleasant men from Fairmeadows!" Fortunately Sir George Harden heard this malicious speech. He was an absolute man, and the comments he made upon it were such as to compel his lady thenceforth to confine her gall (all the bitterer for its imprisonment) to the silence and solitude of her own breast. Of the other matrimonial offers which established poor Helen's reputation for magnetism, little need be said. Both of them were made in sober seriousness, by men of worth and wealth. To neither had Helen extended the least encouragement. Even in her dress she did not do herself the commonest justice; it was plain, shrouding, unstudied. She rarely spoke in general society; and she had been for six weeks an inmate of Fairmeadows, before Lucy found out that she could sing as few Englishwomen can sing, and that her command over the pencil amounted to mastery. On these discoveries, Alicia vented the sneer of "professionally educated!" No-Helen walked the world with a preoccupied mind: her thoughts were in one spot, her heart was with her memories; and it spoke well for her sweetness of temper, that thus absorbed by one great sorrow, she betrayed no impatience to the things of daily life-no resentment to the ill-veiled dislike with which she was regarded by her aunt and cousin. Sometimes, it is true, she would comfort herself with whispering, "It is but for a time." From what has been said; then, it will be seen that Helen but endured her residence at Fairmeadows. There was one spot, however, in its extensive and beautiful grounds which was very dear to her-a pile of ancient ruins at the southern extremity of the park. Here, by the side of a small mere, under the shelter of warm and wooded slopes, a religious house of some magnificence had once stood, and the Catholics residing in the neighbourhood still buried their dead in the quiet and moss-grown cemetery attached to the now wholly ruined church. The scene was not remarkably picturesque; Lady Harden, indeed, had often begged her husband to pull down " that old rubbish." But it suited the temper of the mourner's mind; she loved to listen to the grieving sound of the wind, as it swept through the long, lancet arches, and to watch the motions of the birds that had made nests in the ivy, with which much of the stone work was mantled. She loved, too, to spell out the inscriptions upon the older tombs, and she longed to sleep there also when her last hour came. She would spend many hours at a time alone, rambling and resting among these decaying remains ; sometimes, by chance, and unconsciously, breaking out into some fragment of old song, such as this: "The rain drops heavy in the brook, The wind goes wailing through the wood, The sun with angry farewell look Set in a stormy sea of blood; The lightning flashes wide and bright, I must away-Good night, good night!" "Now stay, tired lady--go not yet, Nor breast so wild a storm alone; The fire is trimm'd, the board is set, And dreary is the moorland track, Then tarry but till morn comes back." She heeded not; with mournful smile She donn'd her wanderer's cloak and shoon; Her home was distant many a mile, No star came out, nor guiding moon. They watch'd her weeping from the door, But O! they saw her face no more! But Helen's pleasure in this sequestered haunt was brought to an end by the accidental discovery which she made one day, that she had not sung without a listener. It is true, that the gentleman whom her quick eye detected stealing among the ruins, appeared, by the pains he took to conceal his retreat, as anxious to avoid observation as she was ;-but the privacy of the place was destroyed to her, and she visited it no more. "I cannot make this Helen out, can you Alicia? Four unexceptionable offers, and not one of them so much as listened to!" 66 Perhaps, mamma," returned her amiable daughter, drily, "she is reserving herself for Lord Calder." How easy and pleasant it is to assign motives for the conduct of our neighbours, when we gather them, unconsciously, from our own hearts! That month of all months which has a right to complain of its character, "the gloomy month of November, when Englishmen hang and drown themselves," came, and came gaily, as far as Fairmeadows was concerned. It brought all the charm, and stir, and hurry of a contested election to the neighbouring market town, and it brought a gay party of guests to the mansion hovse, one of whom only need be particularized-the much-talked of, much-observed, much-desired Lord Calder. It is amusing to see how people will sometimes, with desperate perseverance, insist upon making a Lion of an animal too stupid to cut the commonest caper, too feeble even to make his voice heard in the crowd-upon dubbing him a hero who would die of fright at the bare thought of winning his spurs. Most persons who had seen Lord |