"Strathallan!" he repeated, with a change of colour, and an emotion, which shewed that the pain her refusal gave him, was swallowed up in the pleasure, which hearing his name thus uttered, once again communicated to his heart.

"You remind me of my error, my Lord," said Matilda, while self-reproach crimsoned her cheek, with a glow which passion would have vainly endeavoured to call up. "It must be my care to avoid it in future: you will not, I am sure, tax me with caprice, if I say that this evening, I am unequal to the exertions you did me the honor so much to praise; and that my spirits require solitude, or the presence of my own family, only till they can recover the tone in which but a short time ago you found them."

Strathallan remained as if transfixed to the spot. "She is gone!" he exclaimed, "admirable creature! but she has left me her image, her example. Henceforth I shall learn to mistrust my own heart, and to think virtue's mild radiance poured from Matilda's eyes, a still safer guide, a more disinterested monitor."

CHAP. II.

Nè men del vero

L'apparenza d'un fallo

Evitar noi dobbiam; la gloria nostra
E geloso cristal è debil canna,
Ch'ogni aura inchina-ogni respiro appanna.

METASTASIO. ZENOBIO.

UPON my word it is too bad! Lady

Strathallan should be informed of it-she really should?" Such was the decision of a discreet old lady, at a card party at Mrs. Stockwell's, consisting of all the Bourgeois gentry of the town and neighbourhood, while the mistress of the house, affecting rather to pity, and defend the persons mentioned, than to blame them, artfully contrived to draw out the whole of the articles of accusation.

"Why you know, Madam, Lord Strathallan is entirely engaged with them people at the Lodge; he is always there reading and singing, and talking and laughing, with that

1

Miss Melbourne, who is the most artfullest creature breathing; sometimes he has been shooting, so he must lounge on the sofa all day to rest himself; and sometimes he has not been shooting, and so he has the more time to spend with her, and his dear sister Emy; oh such sisters! for he makes her little runaway pranks, the pretext for his, and all to the neglect of his fine Lady wife."

"But are you sure it is quite so bad?" said Mrs. Stockwell; "Miss Melbourne was very coquettish, I'll grant you, and had such a way of drawing the gentlemen after her, I thought her rather a dangerous companion for my niece, when I had a niece; and his Lordship was reckoned very gay, and resistible; but as to any thing approaching to such absolute turpentine, moral turpentine; excuse me, Madam, I can't believe it of them to be sure he married Miss Mountain, rather to please his father, and-"

"For my part," said old Mr. Spring, the hop-merchant, (father of the two hopeful youths we have so often mentioned,)" I think there is no love lost if he married

Miss Mountain for her fortune; she married him for his title. If I had been my Lord Strathallan I would no more have taken a woman who'

While this little dapper hero, was stretching himself, and deciding how he would have rejected her, with whom Strathallan had consented to share his title; a young lady who professed to be better informed, as to the affairs of the great, reproved him for the injustice he did her. “I assure you," said she, "I have been told, and I have reason to credit my information, that during their engagement, they were the fondest lovers, till he met with this deceitful Miss Melbourne; then he was so anxious to return to her when abroad, that he got leave to come home, they say, at a time, when he could not be well spared; but he wrote to her; 'my dearest,' says he, let the old folks say what they will, (he meant Lord and Lady Torrendale, who were rather against the match) I shall be happy, so I can breathe my vows at your dear feet before a month be out.' Well then he came to Woodlands, and there he

met that artful Miss Melbourne, who spared no pains to win his affections from her, and-'

"O Ma'am," said the old Lady, "tell the story of the hysterics and the picture."

"Ma'am I was going TO-. Miss Melbourne never ceased keeping on, till she had got a promise of marriage from him; and some letters passed between them; and he gave her his picture; it was in a brooch, but it was not the less his picture for that; but after all, my Lord felt some little touch of compunction, and thought it was more honourable to marry Miss Mountain; and so when the ceremony was performing at my Lord Torrendale's, (I had it from an eye witness) in bounced Miss Melbourne, and said as he was her's, and produced the picture and letters; and upon the parson insisting on going on, went into strong hysterics."

"And then you know, my dear," said the discreet matron, concluding the story for her, "Miss Mountain, then Lady Strathallan, fell on her knees, and with tears entreated of her not to expose to the world, how her husband