sinking form, bade Le Grange proceed, and not omit anything for womanish nonsense at such a juncture.

"Soon after you went away, milord, and the Colonel was arranging to follow after you, Lord Belnovine drove to the gate: he came in with his usual smile, in his travelling dress, and said he was fatigued, and wished for pen and ink with his coffee, and sent for St. Germain. The Colonel was startled at his unexpected return and the short message. Mr. St. Germain had arrived nearly at the same minute as Lord Belnovine, and had gone up straight to his nephew's room, with an open letter in his hand. We heard him say, 'What is this?— here is an epistle to desire me to attend Lady Villetta Delainey's marriage without fail; directed to me by Lord Vahl; written to Lord Belnovine, apparently.' The door was now slammed in our faces by the Colonel, but we overheard the turmoil. Oh! such accusations passed between them! the uncle's for his trust

ing the letter meant for him to Lord Vahl's keeping, with the money in it too-he could not perform the orders he expected without it, he declared; and the Colonel's violent abuse of his not having come up to Ville Park before your Lordship had left, as Miss Ellen then might have been carried away safely from the Park, rather than any farther delay. Then they raved about Issachar, that Guillermo had somehow been the cause of the vault being opened, and that the Colonel should not have sent him to Darmaya at all. I believe they came to blows at last; for, when I opened the door, they were close and scuffling seemingly. Nothing but Lord Belnovine's command to see the Colonel immediately would have separated them;-they both looked so bewildered!-but the Colonel walked down after me, and his Lordship handed him his own letter, which he had written for his uncle, with the bank notes in it."

Here Le Grange paused, and the words died

on his quivering lip; and well they might. Lord Darmaya groaned. The very climax of disgrace had abruptly struck him down; the gout cordial had lost its effect, and he was carried into his bed-room, when they reached the now forlorn and melancholy mansion.

Lord Vahl had directed the six letters on Lord Darmaya's shelf, and written one himself to Lord Belnovine, in the interim, to name the day appointed for Villetta's marriage. In his confusion, he had mixed it up with the others. As they lay, he took them up, and thought of other matters all the time. His own epistle went to Mr. St. Germain; and the one for Mr. St. Germain from his nephew, to Lord Belnovine, with the enclosed 2007. A letter of Mrs. Montague's to Baptiste, was received by a determined old bachelor, scolding him for the new alliance, without beginning or ending, that he was going to make with the pretty Fanny Wardley, who, though educated with Ellen De Lastre, had neither her

birth nor prospects, and deciding that he was extremely silly, to say the least. Monsieur de Grange's to Madame Arnaud went to Mrs. Montague, full of the French Revolution, the comet, and all the on dit of Lord Darmaya's table recapitulated, in which he declared that women talked too much more than they knew; but that under thirty he forgave them everything they said; but afterwards they ought to be expelled society-“ c'en est trop.”

CHAPTER XXVI.

"When I am nothing, let that which I was Be still sometimes a name on thy sweet lips, A shadow in thy fancy, of a thing

Which would not have thee mourn it, but remember!"

ELLEN crept along the gallery towards Lord Belnovine's chamber, and there stood Monsieur Arnout waiting for the medical attendants, who came out at the instant; they gave no hope, and ordered perfect tranquillity. His mind was completely in a state of composure, and he had declined sedatives altogether, they affirmed; and the other gentleman, Monsieur Arnout named St. Germain, was not so bad, but quite blind, irrecoverably.

Ellen distinctly heard her own name spoken