did; but none know, none ever can know, all I resisted,— all I surrendered in the sweet and devoted creature to whom had given my heart. But enough!

"Mrs. Lyndon walked with me to my carriage, but we neither of us attempted a parting word. I however retained her hand till I could command myself to say, ' Write to me.' She bowed assent, the door of the carriage closed, and I drove rapidly from the only spot on earth endeared to me by the enjoyment of real happiness.

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"I shall attempt no detail of my feelings on that painful journey, racked as they were by distressing anticipations and bitter recollections. As far as mere physical remedies could administer to a mind diseased, travelling was of benefit to me; and I found a species of consolation in repeating at every post, On, on to Huntingdon!' Yet I felt at the same time that there all appearance of sorrow must be discarded at once and for ever, and hypocrisy for a time be added to my miseries as well as to my sins. For I was naturally, Hamond, of an open nature, and abhorred every description. of disguise. At least, whenever I have been forced into deception, I have tried to think so."

CHAPTER X.

If I had thought thou couldst have died,
I might not weep for thee;

But I forgot when by thy side

That thou couldst mortal be.

MR. LANGHAM'S MS. CONTINUED.

"It was not till I crossed the noble bridge over the Ouse that I once reflected on the injudicious line of conduct I had adopted. I ought to have considered that Mrs. Cressingham was less likely to be at Huntingdon than any other town in England, and also to have recollected that our names would by this time have become familiar as household words to its inhabitants. I drove to an obscure inn, and from a talkative waiter learned Mrs. Cressingham's

abode without difficulty. I was now more capable of acting. I wrote to her, and said I hope all that a man of honour, under such circumstances, would feel himself bound to say, or that a generous one ought. I enclosed my address in London, and started for the capital, there to await her

answer.

"She had taken refuge with a female relative whom I knew by name, who had loved her, and been proud of her, from childhood. In the exposure that had recently taken place, her pride had been rudely uprooted, but her fondness remained even to forgiveness. This lady herself wrote to me, inviting me to meet your mother at her house. I never can forget that interview, or the deep, the dreadful humiliation of Mrs. Cressingham! Her friend was an incomparable woman: an erring sister, when repentant, was to her a claimant on her sympathy and her affections. She gave her 'all of comfort' to our distress, for she soothed as she admonished, and consoled while she corrected. She fearlessly unveiled our future to us, and with as much pathos as judgment pointed out the imperative claim each would have on the kindness, consideration, and devotedness of the other. She did not speak to inattentive hearers-the after-life of both was rendered more virtuous and self-denying by the counsels we heard from her lips.

"During the interval which necessarily elapsed before my marriage could take place, I received a few lines from Mary Lyndon, in the kindest and least offensive manner possible, requesting me to write to her mother. She wished it, she said, not for the gratification of idle curiosity, or from the slightest suspicion of my truth, but for the satisfaction of her father! You, Hamond, can scarcely, I think, conceive what I felt, or rather suffered, on finding that my veracity could have been for one moment doubted. My proud heart swelled within me almost to bursting ere I could yield to the penalty of explanation.

"But I did yield, and for the sake of Amelia was diffuse in my statements of my plans and prospects. My letter was addressed to Mrs. Lyndon, and the burden of it throughout was, 'Write to me.' As if to hear from her was once again to be restored to Amelia and all my former happiness! In spite of myself,-in spite of the unavoidable path, farstretched before me, there was a busy and vague expectation

about my heart,—an indistinct hope, unbreathed even to myself, that some unforeseen event might occur, and alter the course of my destiny, and that that event was connected with my hearing from Mrs. Lyndon.

"Alas! I did again hear from her; but it was not till my fate had long been finally sealed; not till hope had quite died within me; not till the fixed and dreadful certainty had taken possession of my soul, that from resignation alone could I ever hope for tranquillity; and I thought I had regained it!

"But how speedily was that deceptive web unwove! Alas, alas! I had resigned myself to much! I had bowed with a contrite, and I hoped, an amended heart, to every lingering drop of pain and punishment that had been meted out to me! I had prepared myself, as I believed, for the checkered life of mortification and disappointment that I knew must be my lot. But for the tidings contained in Mrs. Lyndon's letter I was utterly as unprepared. Amelia Lyndon was no more!

"If I had ever contemplated her death as possible, I should doubtless still have mourned, but not as I did mourn. I should still have wished and prayed for the quietness of the grave as a blessed passport to her in heaven, and have felt an entire redemption of all sorrows, in the only pure and blessed hope of meeting her again. But not as I did wish, and pray-fervently, constantly, and desperately pray, for

'Death, to still the yearnings for the dead.'

That, Hamond, for a time was what I longed for,--what I aimed at !

"But it might not be; the long and severe illness by which oppressed nature softened the acuteness of my sufferings preserved instead of destroying me. Your mother nursed me, and thus became acquainted with the source of my unexplained sorrow. My delirium in this was of infinite service to me, for it enabled me afterward to speak of subjects to her which I could not otherwise have mentioned. And the lasting furrows which these events had ploughed upon my mind, though not less deep, were less fatal for being communicated.

"It was not wonderful that your mother's health should

in turn give way, on learning the sacrifice that had been made to her by Amelia and myself. She knew it only in part, but it was enough. The discovery of another distressing and unforeseen result to a cause already fertile in misery, is indeed a painful addition to our knowledge. What before was limited becomes apparently infinite, and we say to ourselves, where will, where can it end?-Your poor mother, my dear Hamond, was ever after an humbled and heartbroken woman. I weep to assert it, but so it was. Yet,

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oh! let me do her the justice she so fully merits. No jealousy, no resentment ever mingled with her feelings. It was on herself alone, that she turned the barbed arrow of reproach. It was of her own conduct only that she complained. The cause, the cause,' preyed upon her soul, and made your mother, Hamond, to the end of her existence, in spite of my ardous endeavours to reconcile her to herself, to sooth, and to console her,--in spite too of her tender love for her children and their grateful and affectionate return, one of the most miserable of women !"

"I HAVE, I fear, my dear Hammond, dwelt unnecessarily long on some parts of my history; and, in so doing, I have also, I am aware, wandered considerably from the regular course of it :-I must, however, now go back to the painful moment, when, alas !

Not willingly, but tangled in the fold
Of dire necessity,'

I met your mother to join my fate for ever with hers. Some circumstances which I would willingly omit, occurred immediately on our marriage. It was indeed but two days after

the melancholy ceremony that the amount of damages awarded by law to Mr. Cressingham, and which I had sent to him, was returned to me with these words-words that long floated before my mind's eye with the distinctness of a painful vision, and from which I could withdraw neither sense nor thought. It is not wonderful that I should well and thoroughly remember them, and be therefore able here to recall them; for in one perusal they transfused themselves into my heart. What an abject wretch I felt! how sunk! how lost as I read that letter! It made me think of the misery I had inflicted-ay, in spite of the tremour of rage into which this unexpected humiliation had thrown me, I could not but think of Cressingham, and wish rather to have his foot planted on my neck, or his dagger in my bosom, than his handwriting in imagination everlastingly thus traced before my eye.

"When a legal fine can restore peace to my mind, or the penalty of infamy wash away the stain left upon my name -or, when I can bear that my innocent children should be enriched by the extorted wages of a mother's dishonour, then, sir, and not till then, will I stoop to accept your enclosure.'

"It was an easy task, in the insupportable state of my feelings, to persuade myself that to challenge Cressingham was indispensable. In short, I seemed bent, humbled as I was, on sinking myself yet lower in his esteem as well as in my own; for I did challenge him, and he refused to meet me! To you, Hamond, perhaps some of these statements may appear exaggerated representations of what, under such circumstances, would be felt or suffered! Would that they were! Alas! they are to the reality but as sepulchral lights to the rays of a meridian sun.

"The keen edge of these mortifications was scarcely worn off when I had the misfortune to lose my father. The irritated state I had been and still remained in, made me regard myself as his murderer; yet did I bless an event that gave a colouring to any degree of dejection into which I might be plunged, and thus released me from the painful necessity of assuming an appearance of happiness that I

could not feel.

"It was not in my power to sell the property to which I succeeded on my father's death. It was equally out of my