me the very oldest Joe Millers, pinches my elbow to make me laugh at the joke; and if I do not laugh, he actually explains it! a dreadful bore. The Duke thinks more of his own wit than Sheridan did of his. Lord Eaglescairn is very vehement though, in his loves and in his hatreds; time and the gout have rusted his temper, so you are lucky to be on the right side of his good graces now."

"Are you sure that I am?" said Beatrice,― jestingly assuming a tone of dignified uncertainty. "His manner to me was very abrupt and very strange. I am told his son, Lord Iona, is, if possible, still more eccentric!"

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Only too true! Now let us suppose that Lord Eaglescairn hates you if he seemed to do so, and that I take the opposite part, in rather liking you than otherwise. The fact is, I always like or hate in extremes; but you must not mistake me for a mere scatter-brained rattle, or look puzzled at me, as if I were a conundrum that you are going to give up. I mean soon to be quite reformed into dulness."

"I hope not;" said Beatrice laughing, "I like people with some vein of oddity in them."

"You will think I am now making you my father confessor; but the fact is, that since I have seen you, and known Lady Edith, I find out that there has long been a sort of good-for-nothingness about my life that wearies me. I have seen the world on both sides now, and tired of it. Ever since we met last,

I have been in a state of clairvoyance, which tells me that I shall turn over a new leaf soon, read improving books, think deeply, talk sense, cultivate intelligent society, and be, through your means, supremely happy or supremely miserable for life hereafter."

"You would not easily be made miserable; I imagine that would be much too difficult a task for any one to try," replied Beatrice, irresistibly laughing at the comic seriousness of his manner and words; "but poetical happiness or misery are in general very easily created."

"Ah! you are mistaking the vivacity of a heavy heart for light-headed indifference. You misunderstand me entirely, and it hurts my feelings," said the lively stranger, assuming a look of modest embarrassment. "I have thought, dreamed, and talked of no one but you, since first we met, but you see how diffident I am, and ought not to put me out of countenance by such a look of incredulity. We Irish O'Briens cannot endure to be discouraged and undervalued!"

"A very uncommon failing!" replied Beatrice smiling; you seem rehearsing speeches in the country now, against a London campaign, but you are as much thrown away here, as Kean would be in a barn. What immortal honour you might gain on the boards of some private theatre! That last attitude would bring down a whirlwind of applause."

"You think me affected? perhaps, too, you suspect me of being insincere. What an aspersion! Such a cruel misrepresentation from you might really make one seek an honourable grave,” replied Beatrice's companion, pathetically clasping his primrose gloves together; "then you would at least drop a tear upon my memory."

"Yes! and blot you out for ever," said Beatrice, her bright eyes flashing good-humoured defiance. "What very romantic novels there must be in your circulating library!"

"Very; I am sometimes quite dangerously sentimental myself. The last I read was ' Misplaced Affections.' The Matildas and Adelines were all smiles, tears, and hysterics: they never walked quietly into a room; but came in according to circulating-library-etiquette, bounding, gliding, or springing; and they knew all the British poets by heart. One heroine, reared in an Irish cabin, writes enchanting poetry, plays at first sight on the piano, sings superlatively, and turns out at last to have been a Duchess in her own right instead of the nameless foundling she was supposed. How very awkward it would be, not to know whether one's honoured parents had been in the peerage or in the workhouse."

Beatrice started, coloured painfully, and became silent, in a state of very obvious embarrassment, almost painful to behold. Her companion looked with astonishment now at the varying colour on

her cheek, which went and came like waves of the sea, while her whole expression had changed from the sparkling vivacity of sunshine to the gravest melancholy. "Have I said anything to distress you?" asked the stranger, in a tone of very deep regret. "It would grieve me beyond expression to have annoyed you. Since we first met, and that seems to my impatience ages ago, I have been wishing constantly to meet you, to look on the same objects as you do, to breathe the same atmosphere, to speak on the same subjects, to hear the same sounds, and to think the same thoughts; but now I cannot comprehend what has agitated you thus. Tell me if I am to blame,-tell me if I have offended you. Let me not go away in wretched ignorance of my fault. Pray do let us both for a moment be serious, and tell me the worst."

"I am always serious," said Beatrice, endeavouring to speak cheerfully, "but you and I are both anonymous to each other, and you are evidently not aware who I am. In a tone and with a look never to be forgotten, she added, "I can regret nothing that placed me under the generous kindness of Lady Edith Tremone; but without birth, connexions or fortune, I am a mere castaway, rescued from the ocean."

"Beatrice Farinelli!" exclaimed the stranger in accents of unbounded interest. "How often have I heard that name pronounced in tones of the most devoted attachment by Sir Allan McAlpine, when he

formerly admitted me to the very inner chamber of his confidence! Who then believed, or could have imagined, that he should ever have been taught such treason against human nature as to give up his home, his attachment, his friends, and his country, for the heavy monotony and heartless loneliness of a dungeon in La Trappe, as rumour says he intends. Look at this beautiful landscape, that noble residence, those smiling farms, and that thriving little village!-all to be forsaken, all rejected by him on whom God in his bounty bestowed them, for a lazy cell, a scourge, and a cowl."

"I trust not; as Sir Allan is announced to be a candidate for parliament," replied Beatrice anxiously. "He is like a brother to me, and as a son to Lady Edith, therefore we hope yet to have him restored to his natural ties, to his old friendships, and to his actual duties, by this political movement."

"It is all a mere ruse to blind the tenantry, and to mislead himself," muttered the stranger in an undertone. 66 McAlpine is too honest and truthful for their purposes, and can never be trusted by his masters to enter political life. No! his doom is sealed; his intellects can be as much as possible degraded by fairy tales and visions, which is the popish plan with newly-caught victims who are not fit for their deeper schemes, and he will be ensnared into becoming a voluntary victim, shut up in La Trappe;-a trap in every sense!"