than I thought to die of sleeplessness and starvation.

Look here!"

Bessie tore open her dress and showed that beneath a hair shift she wore a large iron cross, spiked with nails, which fretted the delicate white skin off her neck. "There! you see that! I neither eat nor sleep; but I have such visions! Yes! I am happy!" said Bessy, with a ghastly smile, and with her eye fixed on the open door at which appeared the dark, handsome, but very stern countenance of Father Eustace, his eyes on the ground, his hands crossed, and his face, if possible, longer and graver than ever. "Miss Farinelli!" added Bessie, in a tone of solemn excitement, which seemed to Beatrice mere mid-summer mad

ness; we shall meet no more on earth, but after my death I shall appear to you! I shall watch over you! I shall

Surely, Sir!" said Beatrice, turning to Father Eustace, with deep emotions of pity for the poor delirious girl, while he listened in scornful silence,

you cannot consider poor Bessie in her rational senses. She is not at this moment a responsible being! Her relations ought to be sent for. She has an uncle who would die for her--a mother who doats on her—a—”

"The low grovelling attachments of this life are not for a mind exalted as hers," replied Father Eustace, pointing an obstinate looking finger to

wards the agitated girl." She remains here from choice. Tell this lady herself, my daughter, that you never knew happiness till now. Tell her your real feelings on the subject."

"Yes: I am happy! I am quite happy!" answered Bessie, forcing a short hysterical laugh: "I saw such a vision in the garden yesterday, bright and shining as the sun. I am very happy."

She clasped her hands with a look of delirious enthusiasm and looked upwards, her brilliant eyes glowing with unnatural fire, and the colour rising to her cheek like waves of the sea. Father Eustace and Beatrice gazed at the beautiful visionary with very different feelings, and while a tear of pity rolled silently and heavily down the cheek of Beatrice, Father Eustace looked on with a smile of triumphant satisfaction. A moment more and Bessie sunk upon the floor in strong convulsions. Months afterwards did Beatrice remember in trembling horror the shrieking laughter with which that poor girl kept for ever repeating, in anxious obedience to Father Eustace's command, "Yes; I am happy! I am happy! oh yes; I am happy!"

"May all those we love be protected from such happiness!" exclaimed Lady Edith, with solemn fervour, when she heard the agitated narrative of Beatrice. "That father-and-daughter system in the Romish Church is an outrage on nature, and language cannot express its evils."

Beatrice had a thousand little good-hearted indiscretions twinkling in her eyes on Bessie's behalf, and all kinds of nearly insane impulses at work in her mind. She wished to rescue her favourite, to denounce everybody at Eaglescairn, to carry off Bessie by stratagem, or to get somebody to write a letter to the Times, the grand resource for all public or private grievances; but the venerable calmness of Lady Edith's mind soon tamed down Beatrice to the limits of prudence. "You must implicitly trust all to a kind Providence, and pray for Bessie, my dear warm-hearted Beatrice; but never hope to see or hear of her more while we remain here, There is not a twig to hang a chance upon of your meeting her again, for she will not, while you stay, be left long enough alone for a single wink."

CHAPTER VII.

"I sit with sad civility, I reàd

With honest anguish and an aching head."-POPE.

To Lady Edith Tremorne all the withered joys and hopes of her past life had been like autumn leaves that fertilize the soil and bring out its noblest fruits. In contrast to her look of graceful and intellectual simplicity in the assembled party, no one ever had an air of more insolent prosperity than the ultra-dignified Lady Eaglescairn, when, after having returned from her forenoon prayers at the Popish Chapel, where she had been prostrate on the bare stone-floor before the image of St. Bridget for an hour, she now with queen-like stateliness accompanied her guests to luncheon. How seldom do those whose privilege it might be to render a circle pleasant, deny themselves the gratification of making it disagreeable! Lady Eaglescairn had that most intolerable of all self-conceit, which is displayed by talking continually in a pompous self-satisfied tone of her own humility; and now with a look of prodigious patronage, she took the arm of Beatrice to accompany her through the

large old marble hall. It looked lofty and dull as an empty church, and Lady Eaglescairn spoke to her young guest with the sort of acknowledged superiority and kindness which she might have used towards a favourite little spaniel. In general no smile is so gratifying as that which it is difficult to gain, and those who have, like Lady Eaglescairn, a genius for rendering themselves disagreeable, excite so pleasing a surprise when it is their whim to be pleasant, that it tells with double effect; but Beatrice felt more the annoyance of seeing Lady Edith neglected than the flattering preference lavished on herself.

Beatrice, in a state of total discomfort, took her place at the pompous luncheon-table. She had fallen into a perfectly statue-like silence, being above all, vexed and astonished to see the marked neglect shown to the person she venerated above all on earth, though Lady Edith's own distinguished nature prevented her feeling at all humiliated by the ill-manners of another., Beatrice, contrasting her own happy home with the present scene of magnificent exclusiveness, the grandest and dullest entertainment she had ever sat down to, thought how truly it has been said, "Better is a crust of bread where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."

Lady Edith seemed almost to read the mind of Beatrice, for at this moment their eyes met, and