"I am excessively fatigued, dearest aunt,” cried the lovely Jean, as soon as she was fairly seated in the carriage, closing her eyes, as if oppressed by weariness, which she could not shake off; "indeed, my father bas given me a task of which I fear I have acquitted myself but indifferently.”

"Indeed, my dearest love, you have performed wonders," said Lady Honoria; "nor do I wonder at the lassitude and fatigue which oppresses you after such a ceremony as you have this night gone through; you have exceeded my most sanguine expectations, my Jean, and your father will be delighted when I inform him of the excellent representative he had in his child."

"But the minstrel blind boy !-you must not inform him of my weakness in that respect, dear aunt," cried Jean, blushing deeply at the consciousness of the sensibility she had betrayed.

To which Lady Honoria, casting a look of unutterable affection towards her lovely niece, replied,"I shall tell your father nothing, my darling, but what will reflect to your praise."

"Ah, Lady Jean, do not talk of the scenes of tonight with a sigh of regret," exclaimed Tanjore, "for they will ever be recorded on my memory as one of the happiest of my life."

"And on mine they will ever be indelibly engraved," cried Fothersgill; "I shall never witness such a scene again;-find me such another scene in England if you can. Ah, no, the marriage ceremony is there performed in a manner totally different to that we have witnessed in the peaceful happy Highland dwelling of the Laird Macguinney. Lords are there married,

it is true, and to Lords' daughters; but few are the hearts which are permitted to share in the bridal festivities, and it would seem, by the cold forms of their fastidious ceremonies, that nature and feeling were completely banished from the heart, from the moment that the alliance takes place, and that marriage was a forbidden rite instead of a holy one. The parties meet in such secret and pompous state, every thing is carried on with such strict, formal, and I may say uncomfortable observance of fashionable etiquette, the bride scarcely condescending to bestow a smile on any one, and the bridegroom looking as grave and as formal as a primitive quaker, that I do not at all wonder that at the end of six months from this cold and frigid consummation of the marriage rites, that apathy and indifference should so shortly follow, and that a bill for a divorce should so rapidly and eventually succeed. Instead of rejoicings, and diffusing happiness around to their inferiors, they bundle themselves off to a country seat the very moment the knot is tied; the house in town is shut up in gloomy silence, and you hear no more of the turtle doves than that they were paired by special licence by a certain bishop, and that they immediately retired to rural shades, to contemplate the blessings of the married state; but be assured that they do not carry many blessings along with them, and whether they are married or. not is of little consequence to the general happiness of their fellow beings."

Lady Jean, in spite of the weariness which oppressed her, laughed immoderately at the description which Fothersgill had given of modern and fashionable marriages, exclaiming,—

"If this account be true, Mr. Fothersgill, heaven forbid that I should be married in your country, for I cannot endure the fastidious ceremony you describe; happy myself, I love to see it reflected in the happiness of my friends and neighbours. I hope, however, this is a satire you have just given of your fashionable propensities; it surely cannot be a true picture of the felicity of marriage in high life,-what say you, Mr. Tanjore?"

To which Tanjore, laughing, replied,→

"I wish I could contradict the assertion of Fothersgill, with all my soul, dear Lady Jean, but I positively cannot; it is almost invariably the general rule.”

"And did your sister, when she was married to Lord Wyndham, thus steal away and avoid the society of her friends?" said Lady Jean.

"I really cannot tell," answered Tanjore; "but I think it very likely; she has lately adopted some fashionable propensities, and that may be one of them.”

"Dear Tanjore, I must not hear you speak so excessively severe of Alexina,” cried Lady Honoria ; "she is only just married, you know, and is quite unacquainted with the fashionable propensities you have been talking of."

"Pardon me, Lady Honoria, for presuming to differ with you in that respect," replied Tanjore, deeply colouring; "but I may as well speak severely of my sister as think severely of her, which I cannot avoid doing almost the whole of the time I have been in Scotland."

Lady Honoria expressed some astonishment.—

"And why, my dear boy," exclaimed she, "why are you angry with your sister?"

"Because she nas forgotten me, Lady Honoria," replied Tanjore; "Alexina has never once written to me since I have left England, which is unkind and unsisterly, and deeply have I felt it."

"Dear Tanjore, you will think differently when you know the cause," retorted her Ladyship; "consider in what manner she has lately been engaged; she is arrived to the most serious and important crisis of her whole life, every moment has been employed, every thought agitated. When she is more settled, she will think of those little attentions which she has omitted, and repay them fully; in the meantime you will yourself reflect on this, and spare her from those reproaches which I feel well convinced she has never merited."

The carriage now stopped at the gates of Dumfairling Castle-a light was burning brightly in the saloon, which excited some astonishment to the whole of the party, as they alighted from the carriage; nor did they ascend the flight of steps which led to the grand staircase without some apprehension that the amiable Duke of Belmont was indisposed.

CHAPTER XX.

"Determined before hand, we gravely pretend
"To ask the opinion and thought of a friend:
"Should his differ from ours, upon any pretence,
"We pity his want both of judgment and sense;
"But if he fall in with and flatter our plan,

"Why really we think him-a sensible man."

LADY HONORIA, to her utter surprise, beheld her beloved brother not only seated in the saloon, perfectly well, but apparently in better spirits than when she went away; and he exclaimed, on the entrance of the party,

"Give me credit, ladies and gentlemen, for being better midnight taper than the lamp which is burning, and which I have twice replenished for your sake, my servants, except the porter, having long since retired to the arms of Morpheus, whither I desired them to go, after they had prepared some coffee and placed it by the fire, since which I have been ransacking a whole parcel of my favourite folios, and while you have been employed in dancing on the light fantastic toe, I have been profoundly engaged in searching for the philosopher's stone, which no man ever yet has found."

"And what is more, your Grace, I do not believe that he ever will," ried Fothersgill.