those absurd young persons, who had made up their mind to abandon the advantages of her countenance and protection, to enjoy the benefit of their folly.

Mrs. Courtney wavered; vexation at being baffled, contempt for the speaker's opinion, and resentment against the runaways, held her in suspense; she walked impetuously backwards and forwards in the fragment of a flower-bed that decorated the front of the cottage, while the group kept clear of her, in somewhat of that awe with which we look upon a royal tiger ranging his cage.

But the day had already made visible progress, and further meditation must have led her journey into the night, or left her to obtrude for a lodging on the rather dubious good-will of the Colonel and his fair protegée.

In this period of suspense, the Baronet assumed a courage worthy of the crisis, and ventured to propose her return. But a chill blast whistling through the scrubbed hawthorns and meagre shrubbery round the Ferme Ormée, and a sudden gathering of the clouds that gave signal of a rude night, had more effect than his eloquence; and Mrs. Courtney, without a reply, stepped into the carriage, waved her hand to the cottage pair, fiercely pronounced the word "home" to the postillions; and flinging herself back on

the seat, with her handkerchief thrown over a face burning with indignation, was, with her silent companion, conveyed at full speed over common, through village, and by brake and bushy dell, towards London.

The prognostics of the lowering skies, the only promises never broken in England, became rapidly fulfilled. Wild bursts of rain, drenched the laced liveries; whirls of wind filling the vista with falling leaves, flung the light carriage from side to side; thunder began to growl, and now and then a livid flash shot across the twilight, and shewed some drenched peasant hiding under a tree, or some startled traveller, bent to his horse's neck, and muffled to the eyes, rushing by.

The night fell at once; the carriage still swept along, to the growing alarm of the Baronet; but the lady, who had yet uttered no syllable, seemed determined to keep her resolution of silence. The flash of a gas light at length showed that they had reached the environs of London, and at the same moment showed a man mounting his horse at the door of the inn, over which a lamp displayed the stately sign of the Green Dragon.

The lady and her companion exclaimed together "Gordon !" The postillions were ordered to draw up; but the horseman had already gone at full gallop into the darkness, and the innkeeper could tell no more of him,

than that he seemed in remarkable haste, and by no means in the most easy temper; that his horse was a first-rate roadster; that he had made out the shape of a pistol under his surtout; and that on the whole he thought him as like a highwayman as any of the profession that he had seen for a long while.

To Mrs. Courtney's further and eager interrogatories, Boniface, in his prudence, declined making any very distinct answer. He did not make it his business to inquire much into the business of his guests-he liked to have as little as he could to do with the lawyers, who were always taking advantage of a man's word; and, in short, he added, with a laugh at the point, he did not relish having much to do with any bar, but the bar of the Green Dragon.

The examination of this unwilling witness was therefore dropped; fresh horses were put to; for Boniface, tardy as he was to answer interrogatories, had already contrived to convince the postillions, by a species of argument understood up to the very foot of the throne, that fresh horses were indispensable; and the bowing landlord closed the door; assuring the travellers, that the horsepatrol had cleared the road.

The carriage began once more to dash along through wind and rain, the nucleus of

a whirl of mud and water; lamps gradually thickened on the eye; the sky gradually assumed more and more the dingy red of a distant conflagration; trim houses, with twinkling tapers, shining through the jealousies and curtains of bedchambers, gradually formed a more unbroken line along the road, till at length the pavement rattled under the wheels, and they were in London.

CHAPTER XV.

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,
Makes the night morning, and the noon-tide night.
Shakespeare.

VAUGHAN remained at home during the rest of this anxious day, engaged in the bustle of preparation for leaving town. His open defiance of the Baronet might be supposed likely to be productive of consequences; and his mind wandered among his acquaintances to find what is politely called a friend, or, in other words, a gentleman who would stand by and see him kill or be killed in the most approved manner.

The difficulty of having a friend at command is one of the old experiences of life,

and our lover and combatant examined his whole catalogue without success. Bondstreet became a desert to him; and the round world showed him no face worthy of the emergency.

Gordon would have been the man, but for the double reason, that the quarrel touched himself, and that if he had been as friendly as Pylades, he had now more interesting affairs on his hands. Courtney was out of the question, as already the champion of the enemy. Mordaunt was bold, good-natured, and willing to serve any man in any way; but the matter, in Mordaunt's hands, would be in the hands of half the town at once; and besides, he was gone on the wings of the wind, and would be now as difficult to catch.

In the meantime, no cartel had arrived from the Baronet; and ignorant of the circumstances which had occupied the chevalier of Mrs. Courtney, he formed his determination for the next day, and opening his desk, wrote letters to the few persons who, on the face of the earth, felt interested about him his uncle, his mother, and his mistress.

The material of all was alike; manly determination of vigour in his new pursuit; natural regrets for the necessity of parting; and prayers and hopes for the time when, difficulties overcome, and mountains and seas repelling him no more, he should return to