280

HUSBAND HUNTING.

solation of seeing her, when she could see her only on a sick bed."-The letter was finished by Gordon, who said that Julia was, from illness, unable to write any further, and implored Mrs. Courtney's presence to receive "perhaps the dying prayers of her child."

We must conclude our history. Julia had been seized with a fever, and on her mother's arrival in Staffordshire was in a state of danger that utterly subdued the remaining hardness of that proud and worldly heart. She knelt by her daughter's bedside, and for the first time for many a year offered up the mingled tears and prayers of contrition. Julia recovered; and her mother, still more softened by what she believed was an answer to her agony of prayer, imbibed at that bedside hopes and feelings, more sacred and consoling than we will here venture to define. Gordon, who had by his brother's death succeeded to large property, was generous to this changed and bowed-down spirit; and his generosity had sought out even the fugitive daughters.

The fair Seraphina's fate had been already decided. Her Count was a smuggler from the thriving town of St. Maloes. In a fortnight after his astonished wife's introduction to her new relatives, a large circle of poissardes and contrabandists, the Count himself in a se

cond venture to Brighton, with a freight of teas and brandy, went to the bottom in a gale off Beachy-head.

Seraphina, who had lived in perpetual ter ror in the midst of those Tritons and Nereids, fled on the very night that the news of the catastrophe sent this whole piscatory race, wringing their hands, and weeping their marine tears, down to the shore. She was now fairly in the way for adventure; and with three five-franc pieces for her whole finance, and on foot, she must have perished in the cross roads of Normandy.

But the genius of romance watched over her. As she sat sleeping, through exhaustion and the heat of the rising sun, on the skirts of a thicket through which she had been toiling during the night, a stranger in an English travelling carriage was struck with her desolation. He stopped and spoke to her. Her surprise and delight at hearing an English voice, awoke all the roses in her cheeks and as she told the story of her escape, tears gave the heightening which we are told makes beauty irresistible. The stranger was fine and fastidious, a man of fashion, and an invalid. The adventure interested him, and he liked the novelty of being interested about any thing. He liked the courage which had prompted so pretty a creature to make her escape; and when she

accepted a seat in his carriage on the way to Calais, which she did with a doubled blush, and as he thought a tenfold charm, he felt himself more awake to life than he had been for some months before.

When they were about to part at the packet, the stranger found that he was less serene than became a hero and a philosopher. He attended the fair Seraphina to the pier, and made a parting speech. Seraphina thanked him with real gratitude. He gazed on her deep blue eyes, and the gaze was long. He pressed her snowy hand, and it was not withdrawn. He recommenced his adieus ; but the packet was under weigh, and to complete his speech, he had no resource, but to leap in, and sail for England.

In a fortnight after, Seraphina was the wife of Arthur de Grey, Gordon's eccentric friend, and lord of the romantic Hertfordshire cottage.

Gordon procured a commission for Martha's husband, who had ruined himself by play; yet was not incapable of higher pursuits.

But of Vaughan and his Catherine what shall be recorded. Is there no love dream left among the young, or no love memory among the old?