about to withdraw. 66 My old acquaintance, Mr. Cornelius O'Brien, had so much good and agreeable in him that I positively forbid the metamorphosis. No! Lord Iona, I have a great love of what is genuine, and I am an implicit believer in you. Assist me, then, to rescue those I love from their present thraldom, and no language could ever express the gratitude I shall feel."

"I would lay down my life to merit it, by serving Miss Farinelli," replied Lord Iona with deep emotion. "Yes! it may cost me much, if half what I have lately conjectured be true. Yesterday, Lady Edith, I gained access to that delirious girl, McRonald, who made me open the eyes of astonishment with all she said. I afterwards conversed with that heart-broken man, Robert Carre. Poor fellow,-in his awkwardness and agitation during our interview, I am sure he must have bitten his gloves to tatters, and eaten up an entire Bandana pocket-handkerchief! If all he communicated be true, then ruin and disgrace await this house; but nevertheless, I would tread on red-hot ploughshares that justice may be done.

'I have toy'd too long,

In painted pinnace down the stream of life,

Witch'd with the landscape, while the weary rowers
Faint at the groaning oar. I'll be thy pupil.""

Lord Iona said these words with agitated rapidity, and before Lady Edith could at all comprehend their import he had vanished from the room. Some

moments afterwards he knocked at the door of Lord Eaglescairn's study, where the father and son continued for several hours shut up together. Evening closed in and the conference still continued, but the louder tones in which it commenced had fallen into the lowest whisper, and when Lord Iona left his father's room his face was lividly pale.

"It is as I feared. That is indeed a stunning blow!" he muttered to himself; "I must probe the story to the bottom, and then, coute qui coute, the truth shall be proclaimed on the very housetops! I will have no concealments, though the dream of my life may never now be realized. My father still holds back something, but it shall be dragged out to the light of day. His terror of Father Eustace is frightful, but the confessor must now become an economist of lies, and not make him tell more for the benefit of Rome than are absolutely necessary, or there are symptoms of rebellion. Fear in this case shall not be, if my father listens to me, the fear of man, but of God, and duty shall be done though it were to make myself a nameless beggar.

'What conscience dictates to be done,

Or warns me not to do;

This teach me more than hell to shun,

That more than heaven pursue.'"

CHAPTER XII.

"If I am right, thy grace impart,
Still in the right to stay;

If I am wrong, oh! teach my heart
To find that better way."-POPE.

PERHAPS the most startling sound that can be heard in a house by the ear of man is that of a bell ringing suddenly in the dead of night; and such was the réveillé which disturbed every inhabitant of Eaglescairn that night about one o'clock. Peal after peal rang through the old castle; and when all its inmates had hurriedly answered the summons, it was discovered that Lord Eaglescairn had been taken dangerously ill. It was a sudden and total collapse of strength with which he had been seized; and he lay on his bed perfectly conscious, but pale, cold, and feeble, as if life itself were ebbing away for want of fuel to support its vital power.

It is said that every man's house is his castle; but this is not the case with any house in which a confessor lives, as there he must reign supreme. When Father Eustace anxiously approached his bed, the feeble sufferer turned away with a visible shudder; but a faint smile lighted up his wan,

almost livid face when Lord Iona approached, to whom he feebly held out his trembling hand. No son could have received such a token of kindness with more ardent affection, but a tear fell upon the hand when Lord Iona grasped it in his own. To see a strong man reduced to the weakness of a child, and a stern, proud nature melted into softness, is a sight that few can witness without emotion, and of those few Lord Iona was not one. He clasped his hand over his face, which was convulsed with agitation, and seated himself by the bed, resolved not to stir from his father's side while life and consciousness remained.

To Lady Edith Tremorne her own position became daily more perplexing, yet with all her ingenuity she could not see her way out of it. From hour to hour every imaginable attention was lavished on Beatrice by Lady Eaglescairn, who stole on tiptoe frequently into the room, and adopted in speaking to her a tone of the most caressing affection. My dearest, dear, dear girl!" was the very least of her endearing expressions to Beatrice every morning when she entered; but to Lady Edith, after a slight, formal curtsey of recognition, as cold and stiff as the North Pole itself, the noble hostess seemed to become perfectly unconscious of her existence.

66

Lady Edith could not but observe with affectionate emotion how anxiously-most anxiouslyBeatrice watched the thermometer of Lady Eaglescairn's civility to her, and that a universal blush overspread the face, arms, and neck of her

young favourite, when the least slight was inflicted on her. It seemed, nevertheless, that Beatrice either had not the strength or the courage to make an audible observation on the subject; but she merely became, if possible, the more eager to evince, when they were alone, her own grateful and most unbounded affection.

When Lady Edith, the morning after Beatrice's illness, took out, as a matter of course, her Bible, that they might as usual read a chapter together, the young invalid fixed her eyes on the wellknown, long-loved volume, and her aged friend was surprised to observe that large tears fell slowly from the eyes of Beatrice, as she thoughtfully gazed at the accustomed pages, so long associated in her young heart with all her happiest hours, with all her deepest feelings, with every hope for time as well as for eternity.

As Lady Edith sat with the large old Bible open before her, Beatrice pensively contemplated that noble forehead, the firm yet mild expression of her beautiful mouth, and the perfectly simple elegance of her benevolent aspect, till the entire picture seemed as if Vandyke should have painted such a portrait, and as if even his sublime pencil could scarcely do justice to that mild, earnest countenance, while reading the sentences she loved so well. No nun prostrate on the floor could have felt more truly done with the world, in so far as she was personally concerned; but at the same time, the keenest votary of this world's enjoyment never felt so true a pleasure as she did, when an