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truth was to be contemptuously set aside, if it interfered with those Popish interests which I was bound hand and foot to promote, then, feeling myself called upon to become 'a conscious partaker in undoubted sin,'* the nightmare of superstition became so fearful that I started wide awake at once, and escaped for my very life."

"It is the mystery of mysteries to me that there can be found any one, with human intellect and human feelings, who so mistakes the character of his Creator, and the purposes for which he was made, as to become a Jesuit," observed Lady Edith, meditatively. "I could wonder all day, and lie awake to wonder all night again, that any mortal can read the works of Alphonso Liguori without both horror and contempt."

"He proclaims a certainty of salvation to any proselyte who shall blindly obey any one Papal priest-Father Eustace, for instance, and the smallest doubt of his commands being right becomes a guilty mistrust," observed Mr. Clinton thoughtfully. "When my two churchwardens demanded whether I had finally abandoned the Protestant faith, Father Eustace whispered to me that I must answer in these words, 'I say, no.' He maintained that this merely meant that I said the word 'No.' He observed that this was a lawful equivocation; though, should these words not satisfy my questioners, I must confirm the equivocation with an oath. He added, 'You are not thus deceiving your churchwardens; but, for a

Connelly's Letter to Lord Shrewsbury, p. 7.

good and sufficient reason, letting them deceive themselves.""

"Father Eustace considers truth to be quite as dangerous to society as falsehood," observed Mrs. Clinton, "and makes no distinction between them. When I one day implored him to tell me whether you had not entered the Monastery at Inverness, he answered, 'I know nothing about it.' That meant, it appears, I know nothing about it proper to be mentioned." "

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"I should have told Father Eustace, pell-mell, my whole opinion of such conduct-such utter violation of truth, which is as much broken by an evasion as by a downright falsehood,"-exclaimed Lord Iona. "My indignation, like Bob Acres' courage, would have oozed out at my fingerends. Did you not do the indignant on such an occasion?"

"No; these evasions are merely what Father Eustace and Co. consider making the best of a bad business," answered Mrs. Clinton; "and very bad indeed the best is. He has a degree of diplomatic skill which Talleyrand might envy, and manages that all the strange legends or stories he tells shall become burned, like enamel, into the inmost depths of the imagination-inventions which Milton characterises as

"Abominable, unutterable, and worse

Than Fables yet have feign'd, or Fear conceived.''

CHAPTER XV.

"The God who framed

Mankind to be one mighty family,

Himself our Father and the world our home."

COWPER.

It was a day of glorious sunshine at Heatherbrae, the garden a rainbow of flowers, light shadows chasing each other across the mountain side, the cattle all looking as if grouped by Cuyp himself, and the noisy river roaring like a cataract along its rocky bed. All was joyous in nature. The salmon shooting along the stream, the birds hovering merrily over head, and the cattle enjoying their daisied pasture. Beatrice stood at the gorge of a beautiful highland glen, looking down upon the scattered village of Clanmarina for the first time since it had become in part her own, and a glow of heartfelt interest spread like sunshine over her happy spirit, when she thought that the prosperous felicity which appeared so bright and smiling in the Protestant half of the little hamlet, might soon be extended to the Eaglescairn tenantry. Perhaps the glow on her cheek became deeper when telling herself that in all her pleasant anticipations of future usefulness, she might hope for the cheerful sympathy

and energetic assistance of one whose apparently heedless vivacity concealed without diminishing the warmth of a heart and the brightness of an intellect which Beatrice thought had no equal.

She seated herself, looking like one of Gainsborough's most beautiful portraits, on a mossy bank, carpeted with wild primroses and blue-bells, to admire at leisure the grand old oak-trees overhanging and almost meeting across the river, while she silently wondered to notice on how little nourishment they had managed for centuries to survive, clasping the bare rocks with roots and fibres, but scarcely in a single instance reaching the earth. "So," thought Beatrice, "did my hopes, that had nothing to rest on, always increase and grow freshly from day to-day, that sooner or later my story should be unravelled! It has at last come out,-oh! how wonderfully! and in bestowing my long-hoarded affections now entirely on my cousin, Lord Eaglescairn, I reward his disinterested preference and secure my own felicity. It is a great privilege, no longer to conceal from him the extent and depth of my attachment, for long have I felt and known that it could end only with my life, and that during life it would be my greatest earthly delight,—not to the exclusion of better hopes, but to their truest security."

The pure and innocent thoughts of Beatrice were so occupied in building up her own little fabric of future blessings to be bestowed on those around, and to be enjoyed with grateful devotion

herself, that she did not observe the rustling sound of a light footstep on the turf, till suddenly, with a look of almost breathless pleasure and surprise, Lord Eaglescairn stood before her, and in accents of tenderness, such as no voice but his own could have expressed, he exclaimed, "Beatrice! yes! Fortunate man that I am to have found at once what I was hastening in search of,-Lady Clanmarina!”

The young face of Beatrice had already been drenched in blushes, and lighted up with a smile at the unexpected appearance of her lover, but deeper and deeper still became the scarlet on her cheek, when she said in a low quivering voice, "That name is one I never mean to assume,never, unless you oblige me to do so."

"No!" exclaimed Lord Eaglescairn, seating himself on the turf by her side, and looking at the glowing countenance of Beatrice with an expression of tender earnestness. "The title is yours

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"When I had no name, you offered me one," said Beatrice, with generous frankness. "Are you too proud now, to let me shield your father's name from dishonour by never letting the circumstance of my succession be known? To you let me still remain Beatrice, and for the world, let them never know the freak of fortune that has occurred to us. It is sufficient that they should know I am proved to be a De Bathe, the grand-daughter of your father's predecessor. It matters not to any one now what succession I gain, or how it was delayed. If our happiness is to depend on each

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