her to make the most of her influential attractions. Many a suitor had been rejected by the brilliant but volatile girl. The moment Randall saw her, he was struck with her loveliness, and though every indication was against her being a girl of any high principle, young Randall loved her, and determined at all hazards to press his suit. His own agreeable manner, his accomplished mind, and large fortune, gave him peculiar attractions in the eyes of her father and mother. Fitzgerald urged the scheme, and though on two or three signal occasions he had had opportunities of observing the great volatility of her conduct, and the great lack of even female modesty in her demeanour, he persevered.

There will be no need here to dwell on the various events and scenes in Mr. Randall's life while staying at the house of his Oxford friend. Pleasures out of doors and within marked the passing day, and at all of these Constance was present; her cheerful laugh sounded in Edward's ear at each turn, and her form passed his eye at every hour of his gay and thoughtless life. He seemed spell-bound by charms whose dazzling and absorbing brilliance prevented his mind in a 'soberer moment resting on any consideration which dictated prudence or caution.

Yet with half Randall's discernment, it had been no hard matter to observe that the same fascination which bound himself bound others, and the same meteor hope which was luring on himself was luring on other victims beside him. He spent his days rather in a dream than in a state of conscious reality, and had

long since made up his mind that his undeclared passion was reciprocated and recognized, though as yet no actual statement had been made on either side.

It was, under such circumstances, nothing surprising to any one who knows human nature to learn that in spite of his powers of discernment, Randall was so deceived in his expectations, as to receive the quietly announced statement one morning from his friend, that Sir John Lindsay, who was a common Christchurch friend, was the accepted suitor of his sister, and that Mr. Fitzgerald had entirely consented to the marriage. It might not be any way more surprising to such persons that Randall, though stunned at first by the intelligence, would not credit the possibility of his own want of success, and was deeply persuaded that against her will, Constance was the victim of an ambitious father, or a vain and designing mother.

He sought her out after an hour's anxious consideration, and earnestly pleaded a passion and a devotion to which his words had never yet been leant; the fervour of his expression reached the heart of the impulsive being whom he intreated, and the victim of the last man who had flattered her vanity, or made her the object of admiration, Constance consented to the earnest solicitations, declared the compulsory nature of her acceptance of Lindsay, and consented to be the partner of Randall's flight, and of his after life. A few days. passed by, and the news rung through the neighbourhood that Constance had disappeared with Randall, and that Lindsay had left in fury the house where such an

insult on his dignity had been passed, vowing vengeance alike on Mr. Fitzgerald, and on the author of his misfortunes, Edward Randall.

It is not now our object to pursue the brief annals of Randall's earlier married life. A step taken in violation of every principle of religious or social obligation could not expect success. The rapidly passing days of their happiness, if such it could be called, fleeted by, pursued by the phantom forms of suspicion, jealousies, and irritations. The same fickleness and love of attracting notice, which had been the mother of the great fault already, still operated to produce further ruin. And ere long new admirers and new attractions weakened Edward Randall's power to please. Warned of the folly of his wife's career, the unhappy young man took the very course which must produce further misery, and widen, instead of fill up, the chasm. He gradually plunged into gaiety, and in the vortex of the world, he strove to forget the miseries of a loveless home. Constance left more still to herself, gave unbridled course to her folly. Mr. Randall had taken a small estate in Cheshire, and around him were attracted multitudes, lured by his wealth and hospitality, and the charms of Constance. He simply spread out the meshes of the net, which must ere long close in upon him for ruin.

Warned in vain of what was going on, he plunged further and further into the world, and soon gambling was added to the remedies for misery. So five years passed away; in that period Edward months together away from his wife.

was often for

Possessed of a

noble fortune, there was no difficulty in amply providing for her full desires after fashion and frivolity, and in bearing the even already numerous drafts needful to be made to satisfy his own life of gambling.

In the course of these five years, one child was born, he received the name of Raymond. The loveliness of this child was the one link which bound the unhappy father to his home; and in Raymond's quick and fast opening intelligence, Edward Randall found sometimes a charm which his home was otherwise destitute of.

A dark day came, though one which should have been long expected. He received a letter when in London, where he had been for weeks pursuing his usual amusements, which stated the circumstance that Constance had disappeared from her home, and that the companion of her flight was one of those whose flatteries and attentions had been undermining the frail temple of Edward Randall's happiness.

Mr. Randall hastened to the north; his child at least was the object of affectionate solicitude to him, and to rescue him from misery was the first impulse of his soul.

Edward Randall's heart now seared by the world, was nevertheless one which from his earliest childhood, had understood the yearnings of deep affection. No mistake is greater than to imagine, that the sins of life of necessity eradicate affection, they may press upon their source like a vast glacier defiling their waters with the discolourment of their own composition, but

they do not diminish those waters or slacken their flow; they roll onwards in their impetuous though sullied course; and it may be that as in Edward's case, they reach a stage of refining penitence, where they drop as a sediment their impurity, and dash onwards with unsullied lustre towards the eternal deep; the Rhone has its Geneva, and the defiled affection of thousands their cleansing penitence.

It was late at night that a carriage and four horses galloped up to the door of Mr. Randall's house in Cheshire; the door of the carriage flew open, and a gentleman wrapped in a cloak descended the steps, and walking with a hurried step through the hall, entered the study, and throwing himself down in an arm-chair, waited in silence till the servant brought the lamp.

It was from the lips of his faithful steward, that Edward Randall learnt the degradation and pain of his position. Constance was gone, the guilty companion of Captain Latouche, the officer to whom we referred above, whose constant attentions to Mrs. Randall had been so encouraged by herself, and so culpably neglected by her husband. But what added to the cup of bitterness was, that she had also taken with her her child. The innocent and beautiful boy was the unconscious partner of his mother's shame. Disgust and disappointment swelled in Edward's heart; he forbad any effort to pursue the fugitives and determined on immediately returning to the metropolis, and plunging more than ever into the excitements of the world. There were times afterwards, and those frequent, when he recollected with feelings of deep sorrow his child,