"October 3rd.-Harry has been so fully occupied both to-day and yesterday, that I have had even less than usual of his society. But one consolation, at least, is left me to smooth my troubled path. Harry says he regrets taking this journey, and that he is only going to oblige his father. He has promised, it seems, to go to Castle-Deloraine for him, and assures me that his absence will not exceed three weeks. I think it was the incident of this afternoon which brought back something of his old tenderness and affection for me. For some days past I have been ill, and exhausted both in mind and body, but forbore to make any complaint till I was seized with a sudden giddiness as we sat together in the drawing-room, and before he could cross the room to come to my assistance I fainted, and fell to the ground. When my senses returned, I found myself stretched on a couch, and Harry trying every means to make me recover. I cannot describe the pleasure which this transitory return of his affection created within me,-involuntarily I closed my eyes again to prolong it,-I wished to die,-to breathe my last in these happy moments, and be spared future trials and sufferings. Alas! the powers of Nature are not vanquished so soon, and I slowly recovered. My husband was evidently alarmed at my

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seizure; he wished to defer his journey, and even went to Deloraine House for the purpose, as he said, of inducing his father to set it aside. But did his disappointment equal mine, when he found Lord Deloraine immovable, and he made no further attempt to postpone it?

"September 4th.-Why do I still cheat myself with vain hopes? My husband is again cold and reserved to me as before. He shuns all confidential conversation, and seems to avoid the topic which he himself broached only two days ago. All arrangements are made for his departure, which I should have imagined, from seeing his servants' preparations for it, to have been for a much longer period than the one he specified.

"October 5th.-It has come,-it has gone,that long dreaded moment. My fortitude gave way at the last, and I wept long and bitterly,twice on the point of departure Harry returned to bid me farewell, but even his tenderness failed to give me consolation. Never has my mind been so weighed down with such despondency as at the present moment. Oh, why is it given to some to feel all the joys of loving, while others only suffer its pains? Are there beings in the world whose fate it is to lavish all the warmth and tenderness of their nature without requital? To

ask for bread and be given a stone?' Oh, my God! what misery is this life when unblest and uncared for, for what good does the fair springblossom expand to the day, if the sun-rays come not after to ripen the fruit ?"

CHAPTER XI.

We have seen that Harry Thornton, moved at the sight of poor Ellen's evident grief and illness, attempted to set aside the engagement which he had so rashly entered into, but the influence of his father, and the fancied necessities of his rank, prevailed over his better nature, and he gave up the idea. The crisis was now indeed arrived, for rumour had spread abroad the flight of Lord Deloraine's agent, and the consequent pecuniary difficulties of his lordship; while one of those mysterious paragraphs, occasionally seen in the columns of a fashionable journal, already dimly hinted at "the embarrassments of a noble house, who held enormous estates in the sister isle."

The family of the Marsdens were among the few who remained ignorant of the catastrophe impending over their noble friend; for the whispered

An hour later and the vehicle stood at the door which was to convey him away, while the horses pawed the ground as if impatient at their master's delay, and the driver glanced alternately at the door and the gathering twilight, as he thought of the distance to be traversed before night-fall. And then at last the vehicle was gone, and there stood a solitary female form in the balcony above, with pale but lovely features and streaming hair, dimly defined against the darkening sky. And the rain-drops fall, oh, fast and heavily on that solitary watcher, as she stands there with upraised eyes, and hands clasped in her soul's wild agony, appealing from man to his Maker,-from earth to heaven!