sent himself earlier. She was listless and unsettled; her embroidery was before her—her harp beside her ; but she neither sought to expedite the one, nor to awaken the other. "Time lags to-night !" murmured Miss St. Maur, when foot-falls on the stair, quickened the pulses of her heart, and deepened the roses on her cheek. "It is certainly Mr. Fitzgerald; I know his step," she said mentally; when, as an attendant threw open the door, she turned to receive her aunt, Lady Mary Bingley! Lady Mary was precisely one of those worldly women who have a little sentimental sensibility to offer to all their acquaintance, and profound feeling to bestow on none. She did not perceive that Miss St. Maur looked melancholy, for she did not actually weep; she saw not that she was not at ease, for Emmeline spoke not of her nerves; and her aunt, neither witnessing tears nor hearing complaints, was satisfied with seeing her niece alive and before her, and asked no questions.

One half-hour had filtered through the lap of time, and Lady Mary had departed, ere Morven Fitzgerald entered the room, and when he came it was with a flushed cheek and a fevered eye. Miss St. Maur received him with an agitation which gave a double charm to her welcome. The words of kindness from female lips had always been dear to Morven, and as

he bent over the hand which Emmeline extended to him, his eye filled with the tear of memory, blended with somewhat of a sweeter feeling.

A conversation, sustained with difficulty on either side, at length died into a silence still more oppressive; and eager to terminate the embarrassing stillness, Miss St. Maur threw her arm across the chords of her instrument: she was mistress of the science of music,--she knew the tone of mind of the melancholy mourner whom she thought to soothe, and she felt that the light strains of mirth were ill-fitted to such a purpose. She awoke sounds as wild and as sorrowing as his feelings-awoke them, until her own soul seemed blending with the chords, and that of Fitzgerald appeared flying to greet them as they murmured past him. Lady Selima Murray, too, had touched her harp for him in the days of their affection, but her's were the fearless flights of genius; the strings flew from beneath her fingers as though they fled only to be again struck and again forsaken; but Emmeline's was the very softening of the breeze, when it sweeps along the cheek of some slumbering infant-the chords seemed to woo the finger that pressed them, and scarcely bounded from the touch. The one was the pealing of genius, the other the soul of sound.

66

As Miss St. Maur bent over her instrument, Fitzgerald gazed earnestly upon her, and, for the first time, felt that she was beautiful. Selima," he mused, "has a countenance more perfect, her eyes are deeper, and her cheeks more glowing, and yet she looks the placid serenity and heavenly expression of Miss St. Maur. Were mine a wandering heart, it is here that I would bid it rest for ever; but the hours of love are passed for me," he mentally concluded, "withered never to rebloom!" The reflection robbed him of a sigh. Emmeline heard it, as it blended with the low deep chords of her harp; she heard it, and unwittingly looked up. A tear, the offspring of her own thoughts, glistened in her eye,-that eye was turned on Morven, and with the suddenness of the motion, the tear fell upon her cheek.

"I can never love again!" sighed Fitzgerald to himself, but the sigh was this time fainter, and the conviction less strong.

Morven Fitzgerald entered Mr. St. Maur's drawingroom one morning, with the first bitter smile which had ever curved upon his lip. Emmeline looked at him with pain; he was abstracted and unhappy. Something, she felt, had deepened the gloom of his spirit, which even the sunshine of her smile failed to

dissipate, painful as the effort had been to force that smile.

"Bear with me, Miss St. Maur," said Fitzgerald, as he became more and more conscious of his own abstraction, "bear with me, I implore you,—and pity, but do not despise me."

"Despise you, Mr. Fitzgerald!" echoed Emmeline, as Morven rose, and with rapid but uncertain steps traversed the vast apartment.

"Yes, I feel that I am, indeed, despicable," replied Fitzgerald, throwing a ticket upon the table to Miss St. Maur,-"a thing to scoff at, when such a toy as that can thus unman me."

Emmeline glanced at the ticket; "A masquerade!" she exclaimed, "and the Conntess de la Frivolage-the name is strange to me.”

"And yet the goddess of the projected revel is far from being so," said Morven, in an accent whose forced composure made it heavy and unnatural. "Have you forgotten, Miss St. Maur, the Lady Selima Murray, whose witcheries won a fond heart, and whose falsehood blighted it? She departed for the continent," he pursued, heedless of the agitation of his auditor, and too proud to yield to his own,— "fled from England to learn forgetfulness of her own falsehood, and of his folly whom it had wrecked ·

and she found the Lethe she sought in the affection of a Gallic lover. You look amazed, but I will tell you all. Eager to mingle again with the votaries of fashion, she has returned to London; and she, the idol of my once happy heart, the day-spring of my existence, she is queen of these party-coloured revels! Pardon my emotion, Miss St. Maur," he continued, struggling to subdue his feelings, "it is in vain that I strive to be the cold and senseless being that fashion would have made me. I see your astonishment; and oh!” he added, pressing his hand on his flushed and throbbing brow, "I would have concealed my weakness from you-I have done it long-I thought to do it always-I have borne much—I have smiled while I suffered—I have laughed amid my agony, when every nerve was strained to bursting. I have looked on you, Emmeline, I have gazed on your calm and cloudless countenance, till I have almost deemed it impossible not to imbibe its tranquillity. I have left you, and the cankerworm of memory and regret has again preyed upon my vitals; yet I have borne all this in silence. But, Miss St. Maur, to see the woman you have adored worshipped as something heaven-born her, whose lips had uttered but the words of retirement and peace-to see her figure as a sultana or a