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consciousness of immortality, as by the quiet intellectual service to-day, not directed to my bodily senses but to my invisible soul;" continued the stranger in a tone of reflection that became him well. "Your worthy Bishop announced his intention to receive at the schoolroom to-morrow those of the congregation who wish to hear some discussions respecting my own Romish Church,or let me rather say the Church to which my family belong, for I scarcely dare assert that, in my careless way of thinking, I belong to any church :

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"I have cast off the clue of this world's maze,
And, like an idiot, let my boat adrift

Above the waterfall;"

nevertheless, I shall do myself the justice to hear what so gifted and good a man as your Bishop has to say. No one would be less willing than myself to be left behind, like an old hound, when the field is mustered."

The young sportsman gracefully lifted his hat above his head with a farewell look of polite admiration at Beatrice, and stood with it in his hand until both ladies, their thoughts full of grief for Allan, wished him a cordial but agitated farewell, and closing the little white gate that led into the garden they hurriedly vanished.

There appeared an inimitable grace in the young

stranger's most ordinary bow, while the expression on his face was a tesselated mixture of humour and respect; but it was scarcely observed by the ladies, as words would be wasted in an attempt to describe what were their increased feelings of anguish the longer they considered the mournful but only too authentic account of Allan's most calamitous perversion to Romanism. It was no mere personal grief that now caused their bitterest affliction, but Lady Edith and Beatrice thought on the loss to Allan for both worlds, of all that could give him happiness in life now, and hope in life hereafter. The tremendous importance attached by each to the pure faith of the unadulterated Scriptures, rendered their grief on Allan's account almost boundless, and the thought also stung them to the very soul of that deep adversity, that persecuting proselytism, doomed soon to fall on Clanmarina. There the firmness of every Protestant was inevitably to be tested by all the influence of artifice, persuasion, and authority, so that Lady Edith felt as if all her labour of years to enlighten those who would be enlightened had been bestowed on a mere phantom of hope. It appeared to Beatrice a frightful dream that Allan -her own beloved Allan-should be the person whose influence over Clanmarina hereafter Lady Edith would most have to fear, and whose altered principles must render him an alien to her own

confidence and affection, and a willing victim to that delusive superstition by which body and soul are confiscated as slaves to the will of another, extinguishing even the high and holy privilege of thought.

""Tis a base

Abandonment of reason, to resign

Our right of thought-our last and only place
Of refuge; this at least shall still be mine."

Byron.

CHAPTER II.

"Thus men go wrong with an ingenious skill,
Bend the straight rule to their own crooked will;
And with a clear and shining lamp supplied,
First put it out, then take it for their guide."

COWPER.

WHEN Beatrice thought over all that had been revealed respecting Allan, she felt as if suffering in a painful trance from which she could not awaken. Her well-regulated mind had always most carefully banished every hope connected with Allan's more peculiar attachment to herself, because the conviction was engrained into her very being that the friendless orphan, who owed life and all things to Sir Evan, could best show her gratitude to his memory by attending to what she believed had been his intentions, that she and Allan should be no more to each other than brother and sister friends: but very bitter tears were mingled with her prayers for one, now and always the dearest object of her unacknowledged affections. Long after did the thought of his apostasy steal away the bloom from her cheek, the lustre from her eye,

and the buoyancy from her step. In the simple life of Beatrice it was a great and most impressive event next day, and full of pleasant excitement, when she found herself at the school-room with Lady Edith to meet the Bishop, whose high strain of eloquence on the previous day yet reverberated on her ear and on her heart. His conversation with Lady Edith and Mr. Clinton was full of life and without a thought of display, abounding in keen observation, in classical elegance, and in that deep experience of the world and of mankind, gathered in a long life of active duty.

The Bishop's refined aspect formed a striking contrast to the homely intelligence in the countenances of the farmers and peasants assembled from afar, to whom he had been long known and by whom he was most deeply venerated. By degrees a circle became formed beside the Bishop, while Beatrice, glancing round to see how all the party were placed, saw in the most distant corner of the room a pair of the brightest eyes in the world fixed on herself with a look of unmistakeable admiration which brought a scarlet blush to her cheek. The singular young stranger of the previous day was evidently crouching out of sight, as if conscious of having placed himself in a false position by coming at all to this congregational meeting assembled to welcome their old pastor, and yet he was evidently most anxious not to lose a word that might fall

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