"God forbid it!" she cried, as she sunk upon her couch, and gave vent to those tears which she could not repress, although she could not explain why they flowed from her eyes.

CHAP.

CHAP. X.

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine!

HAMLET.

ON the following day Lord Rufus de

Madginecourt requested to see Rosalind: her dislike to him was now again strengthened by a combination of circumstances, which she could scarcely for a moment drive from her mind; and she felt more

averse than ever to beholding him: but she considered that however great her suspicions of his evil conduct, still she had but suspicion to rest her opinion upon; and that the certainty of her being in his power taught her, for her own sake, to act towards him with complacency she recollected also, how often her deceased mother, in those precepts which she had been in the constant habit of giving her for the regulation of her conduct, had enjoined her, as a principal virtue, to act with every lenity of opinion towards those who shewed kindness to her; and to disregard whatever of evil the world might prattle of them."Remember, my child," she had frequently repeated to her, "how many good actions are required, in the opinion of the world, for a man to be accounted worthy by it; and, on the other hand, how decidedly it stamps him a villain, for one single crime. The unfair judgment of the world, it becomes

the

the individual, whose opinion is perhaps of more consequence to him, to rectify; and to remember that it is the general tenor of a man's conduct, from which his heart should be judged, not from a single action. The most depraved frequently practise a single virtue in its greatest purity; the law of universal imperfectness, which governs this sublunary world, may lead one of the purest of its inhabitants into a single crime. From no single action should a man's worth be rated."

She desired that he might come to her apartment, and in a few moments he appeared in it.

After the usual salutations at meeting,

lind, I am suddenly obliged to leave my castle; my absence will, I trust, be but for a few days, but I could not quit it without informing you in person of my departure."

He had himself commanded all the

attend

attendants to retire on his entering Rosalind's apartment; but once more casting his eyes around it, to be assured they were gone, he added-" I have summoned Allanrod to a meeting; for your sake, I have done that, which no extremity of my own should have induced me to: when we are together, it is my intention to urge him for his permission. to conduct you to the protection of the Queen should he comply, may I rely on your not revealing to our sovereign. that you are privy to the subsistence of any union between myself and the freebooter? may I rely that you will join me in saying that fate led me to the spot whither you had been dragged by the lawless Scottish freebooter, after the despoiling of your father's castle, and that Fortune granted me the triumph of res-. cuing you from his power?"

"Shall I not, my Lord," asked Rosalind, by joining in your fabricated tale, perhaps hereafter render, myself accountable