of delight, she cut away the face it had been her joy to look on, and then wept over the destruction she had caused.

"Oh! my sweet mother! if you were but living, I could forgive and forget all! I would make Lindsay, I would make the world acknowledge that Shame could not encircle you, though now she sits upon your grave to mock me!"

"Hush, my dear Jeannette!" And Matilda's gentle monition had at all times power to silence her for the moment. But only for a moment. Again and again, in "aspirations gathered from distress," would she renew her sad and eloquent complainings. Again and again would she make Matilda relate, circumstantially, all the facts with which she was acquainted of their mother's history, then subtly question, and endeavour to refute all that she advanced. Still, she felt it was useless to encourage her own doubts. The bare attempt made her feel how weak she was in suggesting them, her entire want of power to impart them to others, while her sorrow for her mother's shame seemed to augment as she exclaimed-"Oh! that I could repel the calumny-or, if that were denied, Matilda, that I could but feel, and think, and know, that it was untrue! That I could but say to Lindsay, Lindsay, the world condemns her, but she was virtuous-she was good, and deserved my adoration and my love.'

Her sufferings, mental and bodily, were concealed as much as possible from Mr. Langham, and before him she never alluded to them.

With her brother, however, it was different. Hamond did not know the cause of her illness, but continued bad accounts made him resolve on seeing her. He arrived unexpectedly and inopportunely. It was one of poor Jeannette's worst days. Her cheek was pale and sunk, and her eye glassy, restless, and vacant. Still she evinced great joy at seeing Hamond, and told him she was glad he was come, for that he would understand her.. 66 My malady," she said, "has been termed a phenomenon in the science of diseases,— a paradox in the history of the heart; but you, Hamond, will comprehend all I say and all I suffer."

And then she poured into her brother's ear her full tale of sorrows. She told him her heart had become so insensi ble, that all she loved might leave her, or might die, and she

should not weep for them. Yet that she had ever a consciousness about her of having lost something most preciousto her, and without which she could not live in peace. This happened, she said, sometimes without her being able to define or recollect what that something was; but that suddenly it would rush upon her brain like a torrent, and then there came with it the bitterness of shame-shame for her mother-shame of herself that she had ever smiled or looked innocent before thousands of people who had all known her story. She declared that the thought of this alone would often crimson her cheek, which would deepen and deepen till the sensation became that of living fire. Yet, she said, she did not believe that these things were really felt by her as she sometimes imagined they were; for that heaven had in dried up mercy the sluices of her tears-that virtue and vice, love and hatred, summer's heat or winter's cold, were now alike indifferent to her, and that human passions or feelings had no more effect upon her inward heart, than the external elements on her frame.

Hamond asked to see her child: she answered his request by a look of apathy; but perceiving that it produced a painful impression upon him, she quickly added, "Yet, Hamond, I can remember the hour when, if it had pleased Heaven to pour its heaviest calamities upon my head, might I but have pressed that child to my bosom, I could have borne them all with patience; ay, and have called myself most blessed. Now I am changed, my dear Hamond,--now she is to me as a thing I could destroy. I seem as if I were treading the fiery depths of a volcano, and feel that she must hereafter walk in the same hot and unfrequented path: I feel, too, that her heart, my dear Hamond, will one day throb, as mine does now, with the recollection of a wo that alters not, and cannot die! Nay, weep not for me, my brother, for I love you not. No since the day which Lindsay darkened by the sad mention of my mother's shame, I have loved no one, not even him."

Hamond turned abruptly to Jeannette, as he involuntarily exclaimed, "Lindsay !"

66

Yes, it was he who told me! and there are hours when I feel inclined to believe I could have borne it better from

any lips than his ;-but that is imagination."

"And where is Lindsay now??'

"Alas! I know not. I begged him to leave me--" "And he went ?"

"Yes: and now he is to me almost as if he had never been, except when I think that he ought not to have gone.'

Alas! Jeannette knew not what she was doing: Hamond made no answers; still, in his heart he imprecated curses upon Lindsay :--they were silent, but deep. One malison reached his lips; Jeannette did not hear it, and it shall nottherefore be recorded here.

CHAPTER L.

For now I stand, as one upon a rock
Environed with a wilderness of sea.
SHAKSPEARE.

JEANNETTE appeared to Hamond like a reed prostrated by the storm, and which had no power to rise again. He made no inquiry respecting the manner of Lindsay's communication to his sister,-it was sufficient to him that it had been made at all. He saw the consequences, and remembered only Lindsay's exhortation and promises in favour of Jeannette's being kept in ignorance of Mrs. Langham's history. All the intermediate time was lost to his memory: he looked on his sister as the most pitiable of women; on himself as the most injured and insulted of men. It may be that his former dislike of Bathurst very considerably increased his present indignation. For new offences revive old grievances as surely as moisture applied to a picture willbring out colours which the eye suspected not to be there.

With all his angry passions roused, Hamond left his home in pursuit of Lindsay, but without mentioning his purpose: Matilda never even suspected it; yet Jeannette, whose acuteness of perception increased with her malady, after she had taken leave of Hamond, said, "if I could feel, I should fear; but, Matilda, I do not, either for myself or“ others;" and a burst of sorrow followed these words. Matilda's attention was directed to her sister's grief rather

than to the cause of it; she was therefore wholly unprepared for any additional weight of anxiety, when she received letters from Lindsay and Hamond.

Lindsay's was briefly and hurriedly written, and merely begged that she would not suffer any idle rumours or newspaper accounts which might reach Langham Court to alarm either her or her father; but Hamond's was written with all that minuteness which the unhappy so often find satisfaction in bestowing on explanations of their motives of action, and in the analysis of their feelings. It was as follows:

"MY DEAR MATILDA,

"I have endeavoured to write to my father, but cannot. I have acted against every principle inculcated by his paternal wisdom, and, one only excepted, against every admonition of my own heart. I dare not seek his forgiveness, for I know I do not deserve it. I can never again expect his confidence; for, by the madness of my conduct, I have shown that it was misplaced. I have disappointed the pride and the love of the best and most affectionate of parents; and in my own eyes, Matilda, I am too much sunk even to confess to you the poor mistaken abject thing I seem. Will this ever be different? Shall I ever again know what it is to be at peace with myself-to feel that I love and am beloved? Never, never! for it is a pain to me now that I stand not alone; -it is pain to me beyond what a human pen could describe, that there are creatures who will blush for while they pity me, and whose blame will be mingled with their tears. But the sad tale must be told; though how or where to begin I know not. I have no power to retrace events in the order they happened. When I endeavour to do so, all seems confusion :-my memory is as a dark mass, with here and there a vivid and imperishable character inscribed upon it; and from these imperfect records I learn rather what I have suffered than what I have done. A soldier could more easily recount to you the number and order of the blows he had given and received in battle, than I can repeat the train of feelings (reasonings I then called them) that led to the mad act of which I have been guilty.

"The first circumstance I distinctly remember, is finding myself in the presence of Bathurst, after a long pursuit of

him, during which it had often appeared to me that he was endeavouring to avoid my presence. I can well believe that there was hostility in my manner, for there was hostility in my heart. I thought at that moment as ill of Lindsay Bathurst as man can think of man; but, Matilda, I remember nothing that I said till I called him a traitor to his word, and an unmanly coward-till I accused him of raking up the ashes of the dead as an excuse for abandoning his wife, and, doubtless, to hide some aberration of his own. This was a conviction, Matilda, to which, without proof, my heated imagination had found an easy way.

"I can never forget the look he gave me, or the long pause of deep silence by which it was followed. I can now wonder that they did not produce a total revulsion in my mind; then they increased the fiery fever of my soul.

"Bathurst was the first to speak; the forbearance of his manner, the thorough command he preserved over himself, and consequently the superiority which this circumstance gave him, were, at that moment, more maddening to me than the grossest insult or most contemptuous language could possibly have been.

"He began

I presume you are aware that you are the only man from whom I would receive the language which you have thought proper to use towards me.'

"As you, Mr. Bathurst,' I quickly replied, only man to whom it could have been offered.'

are the

"On uttering these words I would have left him; and made a movement to do so, when, suddenly impeding my progress, he exclaimed, but still calmly

"Nay, hear me! you must! I have been cruel to your sister, and I know it; but it was to prevent her associating with the vilest of women. Had I permitted the intimacy which I forbade, the world would soon have said that Mrs. Bathurst was walking in her mother's steps.'

"I have here recorded Bathurst's words, as I am assured (and as I believe) they were uttered; but they fell not thus on my ear, Matilda, when they were spoken. All I actually heard were your sister''vilest of women'-' Mrs. Bathurst walking in her mother's steps.' Were my thoughts wandering, or preoccupied, that I heard no more? or are the angry passions fiends, that, if they find not fitting food,