fortune, like himself, ought to make. But what cared he for Charlotte Chenevix ?-what would he have cared had he gained her love and broken her heart?-all his aim was to throw Mrs. Vereker off her guard, to blind her to his admiration of Georgina.

The two young ladies themselves were not deceived. Alone with Charlotte Chenevix, and he never addressed to her a gallant word, or gave her an admiring look; it was only in the presence of others that his paraded attentions were bestowed on her. And in these attentions, when they came to be analysed, there was nothing tangible-nothing that a bystander could construe into a proof of love. Now mark the difference. When he and Miss Vereker were in the company of others, he never distinguished her by a word or by the most remote attention; but in those stolen interviews, which had been accidental and not sought on Georgina's part, every tone, every glance was calculated to betray that he was seeking her heart and to plant in it a love for him. But he had not told her so by words: Georgina was honest and open as the day, and he knew that to speak yet, to speak before his time came, before she was wholly his in mind and heart, would have been to frustrate all his plans. Mine hostess of the Cross-Keys deemed she was imparting an agreeable bit of gossip when she spoke of Miss Vereker's fortune and how it was left: she little thought that she was telling him what he already knew, and had known since the second or third day of his arrival. No, no, he was too wily to risk the loss of Georgina and her fortune by prematurely asking her to marry him, or telling her he loved that must come when he had made his way sure, and held her future in his own hands. And there he was now, essaying to wind himself and his coils more deeply in her heart, retaining in his that slender hand which had been timidly proffered to him in greeting, leaning down until his honied tones, untangible though their words might be, almost seemed to come in contact with her blushing cheek, as he turned to walk side by side with her on that sunny June day. On one side of their path lay the hedge, with its sweet wild roses wafting around their perfume; on the other was the field of long mowing grass, soon to come to the scythe; above them were the joyous sun, the blue sky, and the balmy air; and pleasant though these accessories were, it was to ordinary eyes but an ordinary path, yet to Georgina Vereker it seemed like one cast in the garden of Eden. Ask not wherefore, you who have loved, but remember, if the world's cares have not seared that remembrance from you, the days that followed the awaking of the passion in your own bosoms.

"Georgina," observed her mother to her that same evening, “do you think matters will soon be settled between Mr. Lindon and Charlotte Chenevix ?"

Georgina turned away, hiding her flushed face from her mother as she constrained herself to say that she did not think Mr. Lindon loved Charlotte Chenevix.

"Why do you not think so? Upon what grounds?" was the quick rejoinder of Mrs. Vereker.

Georgina could not say "Because he loves me," for Richard Lindon had not told her of his love; and had he done so, she could not have imparted it to any human being, not even to her own mother. She tell of

that new passion, which was concealed in every crevice of her heart, a passion that was rendering her life a heaven, she with her shrinking sensitiveness !—when do the young ever do so?

"My opinion is, and I speak from his avowed sentiments to me," continued Mrs. Vereker, "that Charlotte Chenevix will be his chosen wife." Georgina thought her mother was mistaken: nevertheless, a sharp pang shot across her heart at the prophecy, proving how completely it was being enthralled. And Mrs. Vereker, woe for her! was soon to be undeceived.

III.

THERE were sounds in Mrs. Vereker's house as of weeping and wailing; there was a sharp altercation, never yet heard there; there were prayerful entreaties, ay, and ventured threats on the one side, and there was fixed determination, that would not be overcome, on the other.

On that hot August day-strange that Mrs. Vereker could have been so long blind!-it all came out. Mr. Lindon made his proposals for Georgina in due form, and the shock fell upon the startled mother like a thunderbolt.

She scarcely heard him to an end; she instantly and haughtily rejected him, but he persisted; and as she grew positive, he grew bold, bolder than a suitor for a daughter ought to do.

"It will be useless to deny her to me," he said in his hardiness; "her heart and will are mine. She has made her choice, Mrs. Vereker, and you must sanction it."

"Must sanction it!" cried the outraged lady. "Sir! you forget yourself. My daughter never shall be yours."

He had all but retorted that she had no control in the matter, that Miss Vereker was her own mistress, but he closed his lips on the offensive words.

"I will look in again in the evening, madam," he said, "by which time I trust your feelings towards me will be softened. Meanwhile, speak with your daughter: you will, I flatter myself, find that her affections are irrevocably mine; and you surely will not be the one to thrust unhappiness upon her."

Mr. Lindon took his departure, and Georgina Vereker was before her mother. It was as Richard Lindon had asserted: her heart and mind had become wholly his her hopes were entwined with his hopes, her entire life was wrapped up in his life. He had employed his time and his powers of attraction well. She could see no fault in him; she could not believe that he ever had or ever would have one: to her he seemed perfection, a something between a saint and a high-souled cavalier; and she could imagine no lot so favoured on earth, as that of one who might be permitted to spend it as the companion of him. They do well who represent love as blind.

Oh that miserably mistaken system of over-indulgence !-of never contradicting a child until it becomes your master! Georgina had never been denied a wish—how could she understand denial now? Sounds of weeping and wailing? Yes, but they came from Mrs. Vereker. Georgina was agitated and pale, but she was firm in her own will.

"Child!" cried Mrs. Vereker, "he can never make you happy. He is a bad man, a wicked man: I see it in every turn of his countenance, and in the glance of his keen eye. To marry this man will be to rush on to your destruction.”

"You are prejudiced against him," was the reply of Georgina. "You did not say this when you fancied he was going to marry Charlotte Chenevix."

"That was in the earlier period of our acquaintance, when I had had little time to mark and observe him. I have not thought lately that his attentions were given to Charlotte Chenevix, or I would have imparted to Mr. Chenevix my unaccountable antipathy to him. God forgive me for not discovering that his thoughts were directed to you."

"What can you urge against him?" asked the girl, in a low tone. "Georgina," replied her mother, "the very fact of his being a stranger to us should ensure your refusal of him. What do we know of this manof his connexions-of his former life?"

But Mrs. Vereker might as well have talked to the winds. Georgina was firm as she was; and in the evening, when Mr. Lindon was again present, the discussion had not terminated.

"How can you dare," cried Mrs. Vereker, passionately, "to come between this child and her mother? Know you not that she is all I have in the world-that for her sake alone I have cared to live? You will never bring her happiness-you are not calculated to do it."

"Of that your daughter is the best judge,” replied Mr. Lindon, biting his lips to restrain the passion that was rising.

"I do not believe you truly care for her," retorted Mrs. Vereker. "A fortune such as Georgina's, is no slight attraction to the unprincipled."

"Oh mother! mother!" burst from the pale lips of Georgina.

"Child!" cried Mrs. Vereker, giving full vent to her excitement, and passing over towards Mr. Lindon, "here we stand, side by side the mother who bore you, who tended you, who cherished you; your idolising mother, who has never had a word for you save that of love; your poor mother, whose race in life must soon be over: and he, this acquaintance of a few weeks; this man you would call husband: we stand before you, choose between us."

It was a trying moment. Georgina pushed the curls from her heated forehead; she essayed to utter words, but they would not issue from her trembling lips; she turned from one to the other in her moment of anguish. And then that man, her betrothed, advanced with a sudden impulse, and clasped her to his heart. She looked imploringly at her mother, and burst into an impetuous flood of tears; but she clung to him.

IV.

SOON after the marriage, which of course took place, strange rumours stole into the village respecting Mr. Lindon. The first came from a former pupil of Mr. Chenevix', now a lawyer in London, and who came down to pass a day with his old master. Singular things come out sometimes, especially to lawyers, and this gentleman happened to know the

history of Richard Lindon. The lad he had placed with Mr. Chenevix, as his ward, Harry Lindon, was his son, and the boy's mother, with her numerous offspring, was not his wife, though she ought to have been. Other facts to his disadvantage he also mentioned.

"Don't you think you are mistaken?" uttered the disturbed rector, as a hundred painful ideas flashed conflictingly upon his mind. "Perhaps there are two Richard Lindons. He married only last autumn, a sweet girl whom you may remember, Miss Vereker."

"May God help her, then!" uttered the guest. "He is one of the greatest villains that ever walked. Ah! it is her money then, is it, that he has been dipping into so freely lately!"

The rector kept his own counsel, though he could no longer hope that his informant was mistaken; but rumours to the same effect arose from other sources, and some of them at length reached the ear of Mrs. Vereker. It was whispered, nobody could exactly say whence the report arose, that he made Georgina a most wretched husband; that he was dissipating her fortune in the pursuit of every known vice, which, to add to his iniquity, he did not conceal from her. The whole of these tales did not reach Mrs. Vereker, but certain vague hints did, quite sufficient to render her life one of suspense and anxiety. Who can describe that lonely woman's unhappiness from the time of her daughter's wedding-day? Not an evening passed that she did not shed tears of regret after her darling child; not an hour wore on, but she thought of her ingratitude (as she could not help calling it) with a sharp, ever-recurring pang; not a moment, but she was tormented with fears that her child had embraced a lot of misery. She had expected and hoped to be invited to London to see her in her new home; she told Georgina in her letters how she wished for it; but the latter never gave the invitation, nay, rather repressed her idea of coming. But as the months wore on, it seemed to Mrs. Vereker that she could bear the separation and the incertitude no longer; and as the autumn leaves fell from the trees to the ground, like her own old withered hopes, she wrote letter after letter to her daughter, imploring her to come home, if but for ever so short a time, and let her see her once again.

Those leaves were long ago gone, and their naked branches covered with snow, ere Georgina answered her mother's prayer; and perhaps it would not have been answered then, but that illness had seized upon Mrs. Vereker. Caused chiefly by distress of mind, the doctors said when they wrote to Mrs. Lindon, and it might be, they added, that she was close upon death.

But oh! mistake not Georgina. That one infatuated, hasty act of her life, the quitting her mother's home for a stranger of whom she knew nought, save his honied words, had been bitterly atoned for, and no child ever yearned as she did to throw herself into the sheltering arms of a parent. But how could she appear in her early home, and betray what was her unhappy life-she with her broken spirit, her pale, sad face, and her wasted form? She had shrunk from adding certainty to the fears of that ill-requited mother: alas, that it must be done

now.

She came home alone. Her husband did not accompany her. Business detained him in London, she said, as she sunk, with a paroxysm of sobs

that belied her words, upon her mother's bosom. Her old friends and acquaintance looked on her with an aching heart: if ever despair was written legibly on a countenance, it was written on hers. They did not question her; they would not appear to notice her changed looks; they only inquired with frigid politeness after Mr. Lindon, and hoped he was well. Poor Mr. Chenevix, divided between his wish to express a silent sympathy for her, and a fear to discover that he knew more of her domestic sorrows than she would like, nearly betrayed himself; for as he stroked down the shining hair on either side her head, a favourite action of his when she was a young and happy girl, she suddenly looked up at him and saw the tears running down his cheeks. Even her mother forbore to question her. She observed that Georgina strove to appear cheerful before her, as if fearful that otherwise such questioning might take place. So they talked mostly upon indifferent matters.

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Georgina," began Mrs. Vereker to her one day, "have you ever been down to Braesbrook-I think they call the spot, near London-to see Mr. Lindon's relatives there? Harry Lindon's mother, you know."

What could there be in this simple question thus to have excited Georgina? She did not answer, but she raised her hands on her face to shade the most burning colour that had for months appeared there. In vain she struggled with her agitation; in vain she strove to repress the sobs that rose from her very heart: it would not do, and she clung to her mother, and sobbed hysterically.

"My child," gasped forth the unhappy lady, "I have forborne to question you; I have neither blamed nor soothed; but I have not the less seen what is your unhappy lot. Tell me all. You are but a child yet, Georgina, a child of nineteen, and I have well-nigh numbered threescore years and ten. Who so fitting to soothe your cares? Tell me all, Georgina, as you would have done when you were a little child."

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Mother, I shall never tell you," was the answer, and it seemed to be wrung out of a breaking heart. "I chose my own lot, chose it in defiyou, the truest and dearest friend I possessed on earth, and I must abide by it. Outraged, insulted, thwarted though I may be, what have I to do but bear?"

ance of

"We will live together as of old, Georgina," murmured Mrs. Vereker. "My home shall be your home, my affection your abiding-place. You shall never go again to that great city, with its deceit and its wicked ways-you shall never again be subjected to ill-treatment from him. It was a sad mistake, my child, but I will endeavour to atone to you for it." "Mother!" exclaimed Mrs. Lindon, starting up, and throwing her hair wildly back-the same curls that she had once before pushed from her heated brow in avowing, though not by words, her love for that bad man -"mother, do not tempt me with a vision of peace that for me can never be realised. He is my husband, and I must return to him."

V.

THE time dragged itself slowly on, months upon months, and oh! what a home was Georgina's! Outraged, insulted, thwarted!" she had said to her mother; ay, and she was more than all these. Her fortune