which she was as successful as the fondest parent could desire. Deeply imbued herself with the soundest principles, those principles strengthened and confirmed by the early misfortunes that had taught her in the first bloom of youth and beauty, to look beyond this world for that consolation the world cannot give, she had laboured earnestly and trustfully, to instil into the mind of her beloved and loving daughter, those principles of eternal truth, upon which rest the foundations of immortality. She bad laboured not in vain, and it was with a chastened feeling in which the mother's pride was subdued by the christian's thankfulness that she saw her Clara grow up in loveliness, alike of mind and person. The hour of trial was however at hand.

The castle of Falconscrag was in the immediate neighbourhood of the village of Somerton. From the first hour of their arrival, none had been more forward in offers of assistance and acts of kindness towards them than the late Mr. Mowbray, and that too with a tact that was hardly to be expected from his singular, or as a disciple of the German school might term it, angular disposition. Perhaps it was the instinct of the fallen gentleman that looked kindly and feelingly upon gentle blood yet more distressed than himself; perhaps some motive of a tenderer character might have actuated him, for there were many who said that Mrs. Hastings might, if she so pleased, have become mistress of all that remained of the broad lands of the Mowbrays, and winked when they said so, as such people are accustomed to do on such occasions; perhaps he proposed to her and perhaps he did not, nobody knew, so every body was positive on one side or other, but however that may be, an unrestrained intimacy existed between the young people. Harry Mowbray, a high spirited, high hearted, generous youth, with a great taste for active sports, and yet a strong literary turn, found in Clara, an ever cheerful and ever welcome companion. He had already waded through the greater part of the Fairy Queen, but had more abandoned himself to the witchery of the great Wizard of the North, whose tales of wild adventure, and wilder adventurers, highlander and borderer, love and battle, realising themselves to his glowing imagination from the masterly skill with which the poet gave these creatures of his brain a local habitation and a name,' found a readier echo in his heart, and he fully entered into Clara's feelings; when, upon approaching the end of the Lady of the Lake, she suddenly threw down the book in an extasy of delight, and clapping her tiny hands over her head, shrieked out, "Only think, Harry, Snowdon's knight is Scotland's king." That he was wayward, reckless and unmanageable, as a boy, is not to be denied, but it has not yet appeared that those qualities impede young gentlemen's progress in young ladies good graces in any very serious degree, and the young Clara, prized her boy-knight as highly as he did his little lady-love. He had also that shrinking disposition, that unresisting though it be, is not inclined to be worried more than is necessary by such questions, as What school are you at, What class are you in, What boys are your greatest friends, &c. and seeking to remove itself from annoyance, is consequently christened sulkiness by gentlemen and ladies in spectacles,

who will not and more probably cannot understand the sources of children's pleasure and pain. Sometimes indeed our young hero would be provoked to break into a retort, which sometimes told, as on one occasion, a story in which his worthy father took the most intense delight, a subacid virgin of a certain age, which her nephew and putative heir called "every body's age," having interrupted his perusal of Waverley by the agreeable and delicate, and always welcome question, "Well, my little boy, how old are you?" was rather more surprised than pleased at receiving the gruff answer, "Twelve years next April ; how old are you?" With Clara. however, he had always been the gentlest of the gentle. They parted in tears when he went to join his regiment in India, and the hurry and confusion of warfare never had driven her image from his mind, nor did she forget her playmate. Upon his return, not very long ago from foreign service, he had come to spend some time at his paternal home, and found the gentle playfellow of his youth grown into a lovely woman, the spark that had smouldered in his breast blazed up, and about a month before the time we speak of, he had proposed to her.

It was a terrible struggle. To have thrown herself into his arms, to have avowed fully and freely her love for him, and her willingness to join her fate with his for good or evil-for sunshine and storm, was her first impulse; but, alas! that might not be. A giant shadow seemed to stand between them-hideous, repulsive, but not to be removed; and that spectral form was Infidelity. Her brain spun round;-the ghastly phantasmata of a hideous dream seemed whirling around her.-Worlds she would have given to be his wife;-but the wife of an infidel!-She dared not accept him—she could not refuse him.-At last, with a strong effort, she tore herself away from him; and promising a reply on the morrow, sought in the solitude of her chamber the calm that brings no relief-the quiet when the troubled feelings are but stilled by their own intensity.

Mrs. Hastings, to whom she had immediately communicated the circumstance, at first declined interfering. "It was an affair," she said, "for her own heart to decide upon;' "but a few hours reflection changed the views of the mother; and when, after a desperate struggle with herself, Clara finally came to the decision that it was not fitting that she should unite herself with a man in whose religious principles she could have no confidence, she was much comforted and supported by finding that her mother entirely agreed with her. Mrs. Hastings calmly and kindly, but not less explicitly, pointed out to her the misery that was likely to result from such an union. She placed before her eyes the terrible trial she would have to endure, seeing day by day him, to whom she was bound by the closest ties in this world, on a path which she must believe could not lead to salvation. She pointed out the probable failure of any attempt to reclaim him; the certain heart-burnings and differences, not to say quarrels, that would accompany such an attempt; and the terrible misgivings that must attend the education of her children, when she must always feel that the lessons she had so carefully inculcated were liable at any moment to be effaced from their minds by a sneer from one whom they had

been taught to love and respect equally with herself. She pointed out the improbability of their even passing through this life in harmony, with this great vital difference yawning like an impassable gulf between them; and finally, blessing herself in the firmness of principle that had supported her through such a trial, she left her to such repose as she might be able to obtain, promising in the morning to announce the decision to Henry,

He at first was inclined to insist upon hearing it from her own mouth, but Mrs. Hastings' remonstrance prevailed; and after a short argument, in which, whilst he admitted that his religious opinions were by no means orthodox, or indeed settled at all, he protested bitterly upon that being considered a reason for not marrying him, he was compelled to acquiesce, and rejoined his regiment in a state of mind that immediately attracted the notice of his brother officers, to whom he seemed completely changed, and no longer the same man.

Nor was this the only cause that saddened the mother and daughter. With great difficulty and economy Mrs. Hastings, whose means were extremely limited from the first, had contrived to subsist herself and to bring up her daughter upon a sum incredibly small; but still no economy could have enabled her to exist, without the melancholy resource of occasionally trenching upon her little capital; this could not go on for ever, and long foreseeing what must be done at last, Mrs. Hastings, herself highly accomplished, had laboured sedulously to impart those accomplishments to her daughter, with a view of her ultimately earning a decent subsistence for herself as a governess, and the hour was now rapidly approaching that they must part. Clara, however, was so far fortunate that she was not destined to undergo the misery of petty tyranny that is so often the dreary lot of that unfortunate class when they have to commence their career, as is too commonly the case, in vulgar families, to whom the pride of having a governess would be imperfect without the pleasure of assuming a superiority over her-a vulgarity which, contemptible though it be, has full power to embitter the life of a young woman, removed in early life from parents and friends, and pining in all the desolation of solitude and neglect. She had obtained an engagement in the family of Lord Ellesmere, and was to enter upon the duties of her charge with the new year; and it was felt as a piece of real good fortune, both by mother and daughter, that this was to be the first scene of her labours. She was indebted for this to Mr. Montague Marsden, who had private and domestic reasons of his own for his exertions in the matter, as we shall hereafter see, and who, though himself anything but a person liable to be suspected of mystery, had, nevertheless, some connexion with the Ellesmere family that nobody could ever understand or describe.

Her qualifications for that office in the eyes of the Marchioness, were more the sweetness of her disposition, the soundness of her principles, and her ladylike manners, than any presumed extraordinary skill in teaching, for she was intended to be more a moral instructress, and deeply trusted companion to the young lady, than a mere forcing machine to cram her with as much accomplishments as she could be persuaded to

swallow, (and forget as soon as possible) and so turn her out a musical doll with ringlets, and a smattering of Italian. Lady Ellesmere thought more of the importance of having her daughter, then about twelve years of age, never out of the company of a superior-minded person, and so far Clara's prospects were brighter than the entrance to such a profession commonly is; but still she and her mother had never been separated before. The time was rapidly approaching, and the sorrow of parting lay very heavy on both mother and daughter. Suddenly Clara raised her eyes, and laid down the book. "Did you

hear anything?" said she.

"No," said Mrs. Hastings; "I hear nothing but the howling of the storm."

"I thought I heard firing," said Clara; "there is another, I heard that quite plain !"

Mrs. Hastings listened for a moment, but the young lady's ear had not deceived her-gun followed gun in rapid succession. "Merciful powers!" said she, "is another of those terrible scenes of death and destruction at hand?"

Still the heavy booming of the cannon, evidently signals of distress, mingled with the storm, and left no doubt from the loudness of the sound, that the ship from which it proceeded, was close to the shore, if not actually on shore.

CHAPTER VI.

MR. Montague Marsden sat in his dining room after dinner and stirred the fire. Every man thinks he can stir the fire better than any other man, so Mr. Montague Marsden seemed to derive no little comfort from the feeling of conscious superiority that the performance gave him, and he looked with a bland expression of benevolence and approval upon a bottle of curious old port, of which potent liquid he was accustomed to observe, that it was the natural wine of a true born Briton, and likewise upon a dish of walnuts, of which he was accustomed also to observe, that it was a very bad arrangement of Providence that made them so indigestible. From the walnuts he passed into a reverie, a brown study, a train of thought or a state of abstraction, whichever the reader may please to term it, which lasted about half an hour, during which time he sat musing and sighing and sipping port wine, like a faithful lover as he was.

Mr. Montague Marsden was a little oily globular man, with a roundish reddish nose, a bald bullet head, and a ponderous pendulous double chin. His shoes were loose, for he was shod on anti-corn principles : loose also was his neckcloth, as if though braving apoplexy by the expansion within, he was well resolved that it should not be forced upon him by the pressure from without; the three lower buttons of his waistcoat, released from their charge, said as plainly as buttons could say, "We would not now call the Lord Mayor our uncle," and yet, notwithstanding that comfort seemed incarnated in his person, Mr. Montague Marsden appeared ill at ease. He put his hands in his pockets, he perched his little legs upon the fender, he pursed up his mouth, and still, from time to time, broken sentences escaped his lips. "That getting Clara the place at Lord Ellesmere's was a grand move of mine-she'll be deadly lonely now-we'll ask them to dinner on Saturday-suppose they'll come-shew her what a comfortable fire-side is what sort of a life the mistress of this house would lead -to be sure she has seen it before-and a roast turkey-she has refused me four times-four times in nine years-very extraordinary.—Well, she never can have the face to refuse me a fifth time-can she?-Clara will be gone-she'll be so lonesome-and Maria never will have dinner ready in time-girls are so giddy (Mr. Marsden's sister Maria was a girl of thirty)-There is something mysterious about her history toowonder is the late Mr. Hastings really dead, (here one eye closed)so odd her refusing me four times, I never thought she could have gone beyond the three-hope she's not too cunning-widows sometimes are-don't think she is -" the other eye seemed inclined to follow, he made an effort to open both; the fire appeared to be sending up long streaks of flame before him; he nodded; he winked; ideas, such as they were, began to jostle one another in his head; there was a humming in his ears, he slumbered -he slept-he snored.

D