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tioned this little piece of parish gossip a week before; and they scarcely ever left home for half a day, without calling to tell Lady Edith and Beatrice of this extraordinary dissipation,—but now!-where could they be gone?

Lady Edith wandered thoughtfully on towards Mrs. Clinton's own bed-room, where, having always formerly had the privilege of entering without even the previous ceremony of knocking, she now opened the door and walked in. The room appeared nearly dark, and the bed, which was turned down, had evidently not been slept in that night. With a feeling of greatly increased anxiety, Lady Edith turned away, intending if possible to find Mrs. Clinton's own maid-of-all-work, below stairs, when her progress was suddenly stopped by the sound of a low deep sob. It was repeated again and again, with a suffocating excess of grief apparently, which struck a chill into Lady Edith's very heart, as she hurried forward at once into the dressing-room.

A large arm-chair stood between Lady Edith and the door, but on advancing to the other side she discovered Mrs. Clinton prostrate on her knees, her hands riveted together and her face buried in the cushions. It was evident from Mrs. Clinton's evening dress that she had not been in bed all night, but she was now obviously engaged in such fervent prayer, that Lady Edith dared not by word or action interrupt so sacred a duty, therefore she stood for several minutes in solemn apprehension of what revelation was to follow.

Lady Edith intending to wait in the next room for an interview, was gliding almost noiselessly away, when Mrs. Clinton suddenly looked up. In a moment she rose, held out her hand to Lady Edith, and feebly attempted to give her a kind smile of welcome, but so ghastly was its expression that her alarmed visitor, unable to look at a face so convulsed with anguish, closed her eyes. The next moment Mrs. Clinton had thrown herself into the arms of Lady Edith, and burst into an agony of tears.

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My dear friend! my dearest Mrs. Clinton! tell me all," said Lady Edith, in soothing accents. "Where is your husband gone?"

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My husband! Dare I call him so any longer?" sobbed Mrs. Clinton, while a spasm of mental anguish contracted her almost livid features; and she whispered with evident difficulty the rest. "Last night, at the Romish chapel, he made his recantation. I do not believe Edward intended it an hour before! All is over! He has wrenched himself from every human tie; he has entered the monastery of Inverness. They wished me to become a nun of St. Ignatia, and that would divorce him, then he could be a priest. Let me die at once to serve Edward, but I cannot be an apostate." "No," replied Lady Edith, soothingly, "you must live for your boys."

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They, too, are gone," sobbed Mrs. Clinton, resting her burning forehead on the shoulder of Lady Edith, and speaking in a voice faint with agony. "Father Eustace and Mrs. Lorraine took

my boys. He had got presentations for them both to the gratis college at Inverness. The priests had settled it all a month since; but I, the wretched wife and still more wretched mother, never knew it-never, never!"

Mrs. Clinton, usually so quiet and passive, tossed her arms wildly up, and clasped her hands above her head, with a look of such frantic grief that her senses seemed forsaking her, while she added, in hurried accents, and in so unearthly a voice that Lady Edith felt paralysed, "We are to meet no more! My husband believes it would be a sin ever to see his faithful wife again."

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"He thinks," replied Lady Edith sadly, by making this world a purgatory, to escape one in the world to come. What a fatal, cruel delusion!"

"I always knew," added Mrs. Clinton, solemnly, "that death at last must part us, and I felt, in some degree, prepared for that; one or other, I knew, must survive in solitary sorrow to mourn for the other:

"There is no union here on earth,
That finds not here an end.'

But Father Eustace has brought on me this long agony without death, for which I was totallytotally unprepared. God help us all! May my senses not forsake me!"

Lady Edith felt that words were wasted in offering consolation to such sorrow as this; but affectionately leading Mrs. Clinton to the sofa, she gently placed her on it, and, kneeling by her side, she in faltering accents of deep emotion offered up

a short and fervent prayer for her heart-stricken friend. It was full of sympathy, full of affection, and at the same time full of an abounding faith in the merciful superintendence of God, which nothing on earth could shake.

From henceforth Mrs. Clinton's home was no longer her own, and she had few, very few possessions. Her active life had been one of daily selfdenial; and during the many years of her married happiness, she had never spent a frivolous shilling. Now nothing was left her but a few books by the best Protestant authors, and her own inestimable Bible.

"I wonder what degree of grief kills people, if mine does not!" said Mrs. Clinton, some hours after, in a faint and tremulous voice, to Lady Edith, who held her cold, clammy, death-like hand; "I shall soon be in my grave, or yet more probably, in a lunatic asylum."

"No, dear Mrs. Clinton; you will to-night be in my house, and remain there always among those who, with their whole hearts, love, honour, and respect you. At my home, this evening, we must all unite in prayer for your unhappy husband. This is a delirium that comes over people, quite beyond the reach of reasoning, and perfectly untouched by argument or common sense; it is like the effect of magic; but let us hope all things, and believe all things possible.'

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My boys, too! my darling boys! Father Eustace and Mrs. Lorraine did not even allow me to take leave of them; they were gone before I found out the danger." Mrs. Clinton rocked her

self to and fro, with her hands clenched over her forehead, adding, "He who never had wife or child, cannot feel for me. I might as well expect to find fire burning in a marble statue as pity in Father Eustace. My dear, darling boys!"

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They go, dear Mrs. Clinton, fortified by your prayers these many long years, and by your best instructions."

"Yes; but, dear Lady Edith, for some time past their own father has been reading to our boys preparatory books that I could not approve: little novellettes, by English clergymen, full of allegorical phantoms, fairies, and magic, to prepare their young minds for supernatural visions and fictitious miracles. Children may easily be educated for superstitious horrors, because that taste is, like every other popish error, founded on fallen human nature."

"I know the sort of books. Protestant parents call them so pretty,' and do not see the poison they contain. They have allegories full of imaginative religion, describing children, for instance, who carry palm branches in their hands up the hill of life, which withered or drooped if they sinned; or whose garments glistened with supernatural light while they crossed a dark stream, but became spotted with black when they were wicked. Such fables train their minds in the way they are now intended to go. I remember nurse Barton, whom you dismissed years ago, because, to save herself trouble in training the children to rational obedience, she told them, and they implicitly be

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