and questions caused by Lucy's intense wish to lose not a syllable of the tale.

"You think me odd, Lucy, that I should call upon you thus suddenly to listen to what I have hitherto concealed from you and you thought me odd when I refused that excellent Lord Calder—a husband for you, my Lucy, some day or other, I would fondly hope. But it was always so. I was always strange, reserved, perhaps capricious, from the day when I was born. Now I feel as if I must speak. I should not like to pass away-nay, dearest it is so, for I am going, and by God's mercy, quickly and easily-and be misunderstood by you, Lucy,—so patient as you have been with me!

"You know the story of my mother's first marriage, but you never saw her, I think; and if I speak of her character freely, it is only, Heaven knows, to show you mine clearly. My father left her a young widow, with a handsome fortune; and I was to be brought up, for vanity and display, to be shown about by her as an ornament, as soon as her own youth and beauty faded. Let me not be severe: I have said enough to explain to you on what principles they educated me. But God gave me a mind on which their system worked in vain. I never loved show and gaiety; and by being dragged into it ceaselessly, so soon as I ceased to be a school-girl, learned to hate it all the more. And, then, I was shocked by overhearing it severely commented upon in Paris, where we lived-my being exhibited-yes, exhibited so much and so long, before I was married (you know it is not their custom). Heaven knows, this was not my poor mother's fault, at least; I was

stubborn and fastiduous, and refused...... I might have known how I was to be blessed!

"Well, we went on in this way for a long, weary time, ill at ease with each other, I graver each year than the last; she, gayer, fonder of society, the noisiest, most heartless. At last I was given up as hopeless, allowed to stay away from crowded balls and stupid soirèes, when I pleased; allowed to bury myself with a book at home, when the rest of the world was out and abroad; pronounced and "odd girl" in every tone of vexation and despair, till they wearied themselves into silence, and I was as happy as any creature could be who lives alone with his thoughts.

Then came a time—the time, Lucy!-I almost fear to speak of it--but I met, in the most common-place manner possible, at the house of a friend .....I could talk for ever, and never say half enough. You know not what it is to have a restless, aspiring, unquiet spirit, bruised and wounded daily, and then to find a shelter, a protector; one that understands you, and thinks of you, and thinks for you, and enters into all your day-dreams, and loves them for your sake, and bears with reproach, and neglect, and misunderstanding—and a man, too, as well as a lover-as fearless as he was gentle,-generous, beautiful, devoted .....

"He was a soldier, Lucy, an Englishman; yes, to be sure, none but my country has such sons, and it, but one such ;—so brave, so tender! I can speak of him to-night without pain-with pride. There have been times when the sound of his name (do you remember when Captain Wentworth was here ?) has made me shiver ready to die. God knows that I was not ungrateful for the blessing of

such a true heart to rest upon. I am proud of having been permitted to love him; and I trust and hope, that where he is, there is a place for me at his side!

"It was long ere my mother would hear of it; and when she saw I was firm, and would not relinquish my affection-I cannot, if I would, tell you how it grew, but it was no thing of a summer's day-it was longer before she would receive him with any decent courtesy. She had set her heart so upon seeing me a countess! But he bore with her humours as if he did not notice them-he, as keen sighted as a hawk. Well it is now all past and gone; but I cannot bear to think of those days-dear, happy days, though, some of them were-when we were left to ourselves, and he would sit and read to me for hours, as if he had not been a strong man and a soldier, and he would calm my angry spirit as if I had been a child-and talk of the future-glorious palaces in air we built! When I have seen other men since, and measured them with him . . . . . . O Lucy! there never was such another !

"We were to be married-we should have been married, but for the sudden change made in every thing, in France, by Buonaparte's return from Elba. Frederick was, of course obliged to join his regiment. O, that first parting! I knew, as I held him in my arms, as I leant on his shoulder, that my hopes were destroyed for ever-that we should never meet again as we had met. I bore up, however, while he was with me, but I sunk,-how I sunk!— when I lost the last glimpse of his plume, and could not catch the sound of his horse's feet any longer. And my mother,-she had begun to love him too, and showed her anxiety, now that he was gone, by her irritability-upbraided me

with my depression. A fit wife for a soldier!' she would say. Alas! I had nothing of the hero in my composition.

"We met again once more, God be thanked! in Brussels, just before the battle of Waterloo. We were at the ball together, when the dreadful news came. I think I never loved him so well, never enjoyed his society so much, as in the few brief hours we then spent together I remember every look, every word; and we danced together—that very waltz, Lucy: -you now know why the hearing of it nearly killed me. And this was our last, last meeting, save on the death bed, and by the grave. How the parting went over, I forget; there was the hurry, and the excitement, and the holding up of the spirit, sick with fear, that he might not see me sad. He went-it is like a dream!—and the next days are like a dream, too. O! to listen to the firing, and to know that he was in the midst of it, and breathlessly to wait for the promised message, which came not;-and to feel as if time would never go over, and tidings never come;-and to see our daily meals brought in, and night come on, as usual,—and to gather up greedily any street-whisper,-and to go and ask the poorest, most unlikely people, for their news, in the desperate hope of finding the comfort of words,-and to cling to that comfort. ...

.....

"It came, at last it came !-I was sitting alone, the day but one after the battle, sure that the worst had happened, for that, had he been alive, he would have written to me, sent-I was sitting alone, in a darkened room, half stupified, half sleeping, I believe, for I had not closed my eyes for three nights. On a sudden I heard wheels in the street; I knew they came to me, and I covered my face, and tried

to pray-I was right; there was a low knock at the door, and then the dull, huddling sound of feet, below first, and then ascending the stairs, and one voice, above the rest, giving directions. I fixed my eyes on my chamber door, expecting it would open; but the feet passed it, and I heard a voice say, 'he does not know where he is.' He was alive then! alive! and under our roof! I sprung up from the bed upon which I had flung myself, and restraining myself with a force not my own, crept softly towards the chamber to which they had borne him. I grew deadly sick on the threshold; but at last I mustered up my strength, and went in!

"The sight which I saw !-Merciful Heaven! that it could be he!-that maimed, broken, pale, bleeding.....

"I sate beside him all the night, his hand in mine; and I wiped his brow to the last, and I moistened his lips. He once called me by my name; and I knew when those dreadful pangs seized him, for then he drew his hand away, lest he should clench it suddenly and hurt me. My mother had been carried to bed in violent hysterics.

"It was when the dawn of morning was beginning to make the watchlight look red and sickly, that I felt the hand in mine grow cold, and the dew thicken on his brow; he was asleep, I thought; for, fool that I was! I hoped to the last! He was asleep ;-but it was the sleep of death!"

She paused for awhile, exhausted by the vehemence with which she had spoken; and the two were silent, for Lucy's tears were flowing too fast to permit her to speak.

"You know the rest," resumed Helen, yet more feebly than before" how my mother chose, within a fortnight after we laid him cold in the grave, to marry a Russian