majesty-like ! and she was a gentle 'mesticated body, not pompious in nothink but 'pearance : but my lord was a scornful, sniffing, mighty grand man, always a making faces as if the air he breathed wasn't good enough for him, and smelt physicky like, and he never descended in his manners, but was a stuck up, blown out sort of gentleman. Well, I lived here till I married Dick the second gardener, and how it comed about, I was walking in the garden one day-young man comes up.

"What's your name ?' ses he, 'you be a comely lass.'

"Vilet,' ses I.

'Vilet,' ses he, is that it ? 'tis a pretty, modest, sweet flower-just like yourself, Miss -I likes vilets,' ses he.

"And every day after, brings me a nosegay reg'lar well, we was married, and went to another part of the country to live—a young fam❜ly came, but one by one, as they grow'd up they died of summut or other. Jenny, of information, two others of some outlandish named thing, and at last my poor husband died too." She wiped the tears from her eyes and presently went on.

"I com❜d back to the old parts, 'tis so rulah and pretty here, an' hearing say as how the lord was wanting a housekeeper, I implied for the capacity. Ses he 'Madam, your portalent carriage will do credit to my establishment,'-his very words, Miss-so I com'd here at Michaelmas.'

"And do you find yourself comfortable ?" "Well," she answered, drawing up her little nose, "pooty well, but the goins on here beant quite to my liking-all these new fangled ways, suffuses me sometimes, and these mestics is so imperent, they gets up dances now, and goes a scorting up the carpets till I'm amost smothered with the dust; and then the purvidence is so 'stensive that I'm pretty well aggravated sometime; but there, out of kindness to my lord, from being acquainted so to speak with his parents, I've com'd here, not studying my own conveniency."

I liked the old lady so much, that my visits to her apartment were frequently repeated, and we became capital friends.

I was sure of a kind welcome, whenever I visited the "snuggery," as I called it, and her

VOL. I.

L

warm affectionate manners, and cool philosophizing discourse, were really of service to me, aiding to balance the want of sympathy in the gilded saloon above stairs, and the tenderer sentiments of a heart, which then, was unacquainted with philosophy.

CHAPTER XV.

"Da fing mein Leben an, als ich dich liebe!"

GÖTHE, Iphigenia.

"Denkt ihr an mich ein Augenblickchen nur,

Ich werde Zeit genug an euch zu denken haben."

FAUST.

OH! the dreary winter! when the moaning wind went breathing its lamentations round every turret and dome of the gloomy Castle, whistling among the withered branches of the melancholy trees, and sighing over the face of the waters and when the snow came downsteadily, steadily, day after day, till the whole country was wrapped in its winding-sheet.

:

When frosty days-and rainy days, ice and slush, succeeded each other alternately, how oppressed with miserable fancies was poor Isola!

Lord D'Arville devoted his time to learning the concertina; Lady Bernard knitted from morning till night; whilst I read and yawned, painted and sighed, practised and fretted in solitude.

Nothing else? yes, thoughts of the past came flooding my spirit, bringing visions that saddened me sometimes, and at others sent a thrill through my very soul; and I felt my temples burning with a fiery blush-was it at the thought of Mr. St. Leger? recollections of that gentleman searcely ever passed through my mind. No, one memory alone seemed to live there, round it thoughts and feelings clustered most strangely, as if my spirit's life had been dated from that one point; all other memories appeared sunk in the abyss of forgetfulness, I felt that I had lived-really lived, only since I had known-Mr. Grey !

How I thought about him! how I took in review every scene in which he had played a part! how I remembered and treasured up his words-his very looks, till imagination attained such a power, that in the grey twilight, or the uncertain gleam of the flickering fire, I could almost fancy he was at my side, his spirit-eyes