CHAPTER XII.

"I cannot tell how the truth may be,

I say the tale as 'twas said to me."-SCOTT.

THE battle of the approaching election had now grown "fast and furious." Dinners were eaten, speeches delivered, and toasts drunk to the most enraptured cheers by all who had no votes; but the farmers and freeholders stood firmly aloof, and when the Popish factor from Eaglescairn attempted to address the electors on behalf of Sir Allan, there were only ironical cries of "Hear!" "Hear!" drowned by coughing, hissing, and tumultuous cries of "Chair!" A more noisy assembly was never called to order, and never more unsuccessfully. Some fell out, and some fell under the table; there were broken heads and broken promises; but though the Eaglescairn committee could get a show of very unwashed hands to any amount, there was much cry and little wool, as the voters themselves remained obstinately sober and unpledged. The factor was quite pathetic in his expressions of friendship and regard for Mr. Carre and his son,-it might have drawn tears from any

eyes to hear how highly he estimated them both; but there never was a deafer ear than that which Robert Carre turned to the complaisant agent of Lord Eaglescairn.

Beatrice Farinelli had been endowed by nature with a lively imagination, and there was moreover no small tinge of romance in her disposition, both of which tendencies were excited to the highest degree of activity by her present circumstances. The attachment of Sir Allan, so long apparently dormant, had seemed, ever since she considered him so changed, a mere boyish partiality, which she believed herself conscientiously bound never fully to reciprocate, therefore she had carefully guarded her own feelings lest they should exceed towards him that true sisterly affection to which she believed that they ought to be limited, and to which she had little difficulty in restoring them. It was otherwise in respect to Lord Iona. The depth and power of his attachment to herself had taken Beatrice completely by surprise, and caused her a perfectly new feeling of, truth to say, delightful embarrassment. His whole manner and character were piquant and original; nothing that he ever said or did resembled anybody but himself; none of his ideas were common, like an old tune set to a barrel-organ; but even in expressing the depth and sincerity of his love it was done as no one else would have done it, and Beatrice, agitated as she was, could not but smile at the

recollection. In his graver mood, however, Lord Iona had touched a chord in the heart of Beatrice, which seemed for the first time in her life to vibrate, revealing an hitherto undeveloped faculty of love, such as her young heart had never before experienced. With Allan, the habitual companion of her juvenile years, there had been every sentiment of partiality and friendship; but Allan had long ceased to be considered by Beatrice as entitled to the whole worid of her affections, to be the polar star of her existence. Amidst the silence and mystery of night Beatrice communed with her own thoughts, and while telling herself a thousand times over that she must walk alone through the long valley of life, still the bright countenance of Lord Iona, glittering with vivacity, or subdued as she had lately seen it by sensibility, forced itself into companionship with all the hopes and fears which seemed to beset her future path along the vista of life, and it was impossible not to feel what an existence hers might be under the sunshine of such an attachment as his. Like other girls, Beatrice had often dreamed over an imaginary declaration of devoted love, and now her own heart whispered that none but a mere automaton could have remained insensible to the disinterested and generous preference of such a man as Lord Iona. She was touched by the noble frankness with which he had, in half-spoken accents, hurriedly but energetically declared it, and as there

is to the labyrinth of every human heart some infallible clue, that of Beatrice had certainly been discovered at last.

Had Lord Iona been son and heir to Croesus as well as heir to one of the proudest coronets in Scotland, that would have only seemed an additional barrier between them, but great was the surprise of Beatrice, mingled with some rather uneasy curiosity on the subject, to find that Lord Eaglescairn entertained such treasonable thoughts against the arbitrary will of Father Eustace as to dream of encouraging Lord Iona's attachment to herself without his sanction, or rather contrary to his wishes. She rubbed her eyes to ascertain that she really was now wide awake, and really at Eaglescairn Castle, having thought that Lord Eaglescairn would rather have stood in the way of an express train than withstood to the face, on any pretext, the decree on any matter, public or domestic, of that name, now in connexion with Sir Allan's perversion so dismally familiar to her thoughts, "Father Eustace."

Beatrice at once told every thought of her heart to Lady Edith, who seemed to grow young again under the influence of that affectionate interest with which she listened to all the acknowledgments of her adopted child; endeared to her more and more every day by the unbounded confidence which subsisted between them; not a secret having ever for a moment divided their minds. It was with VOL. II.

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great astonishment, therefore, and with long continued incredulity, that Lady Edith was soon after this led to suspect that her own beloved Beatrice had at length some concealment from her, and that her mind had become suddenly preoccupied on some subject which she was evidently. anxious to avoid mentioning. Once or twice, Lady Edith, when she entered the room unexpectedly, found Beatrice intently brooding over papers which she hastily huddled into a drawer; while, with greatly heightened colour, she hurriedly spoke on any subject apparently the farthest from that with which her mind was entirely preoccupied. Lady Edith had an entire trust in her much-loved Beatrice; and though surrounded by those who were opposed to her in faith and feeling, she never for a single instant doubted the loyalty of attachment with which Beatrice would ever remain devoted to the religion and to the affections of her own home. Still, though Lady Edith, with all the delicacy of a refined and high-born disposition, refrained from the most distant hint that her young protegée had become unaccountably absent and thoughtful, she inwardly felt a deep increasing solicitude, raised by degrees to the utmost endurable pitch, when plainly perceiving that the dear girl had obviously some hidden anxiety within her heart of hearts, not to be alluded to:—while avoiding all that really interested her, she, in a tone of the strictest confidence and the deepest mystery, consulted