"No, grandfather, they will expect me down-stairs; another time I will remain; farewell now, until to-morrow."

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'Farewell, Lily, and hearken; when you come again, put on the little blue dress with the lace ruffles. It suits my fancy and your style of face; and let your curls drop again. I do not like this severe braided hair. Give

me

"Tresses unconfined,

Wooed by each Egean wind.'

"There it goes again, Lilian. It is the curse of memory to be obliged to speak in other men's words half the time."

I laughed and left him.

CAMILLA BOUVERIE.

WHEN we were alone in her chamber, I related to my grandmother all that had occurred, from first to last, between Pat McCormick and myself, and ended by giving her the ring.

She received it with evident emotion.

"Times are changed, Lilian," she

said, "since the greatest monarch of this day placed this ring on your grandfather's hand with his own royal fingers, in the presence of his court. The stone that occupied that vacant circle there, was the most magnificent diamond my eyes ever rested on. Its brilliancy was magnetic, and it had a peculiarity, whether from some flaw or intentional setting, I never knew, from which it derived its name of the 'Gnome-Eye!""

I was startled, and uttered a hasty exclamation.

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'Yes, it was a strange name," she pursued, wholly unconscious of the cause of my amazement; "but had you seen the singularly perfect, almost human eye within, from which issued on every side small glancing rays of light-your astonishment would have reached its climax. It was the most exquisite accident (if such it were) nature ever pleaded guilty to; but I incline to the belief, that a skilful lapidary was at the bottom of the optical illusion for such your grandfather seemed to consider itand that it was

a mere reflection of the eye, without the color that gazed into its depths." "What became of the stone, grandmother?" I asked, suppressing my own experience with regard to it.

"Your grandfather had divested it of its setting, and replaced it with an onyx seal, which he had fitted to the aperture. I am of the opinion he did this with a view to such an emergency as the present: for he had the stone

in his vest-pocket when he left us. At least, I recognized the small motherof-pearl box set with turquoise, in which he always kept it; and he said, putting his hand upon it: 'I have something here that may serve me in an hour of need. I had intended to dispose of it differently had circumstances favored; but necessity knows no law. It may glitter yet on the brow of a queen, for all I know!'"

Had he no other resources? I inquired. "Was this his sole dependence?"

'None, except the gold he received from Dr. Quintil; that green purse, with its contents, was part of a marriage-gift Paul meant for you, dearest. His semi-annual remittance can be received from Bishop Clare, it is true, and thus the obligation can be easily discharged. But under any circumstances, you would prefer to have it thus bestowed, we know."

Unquestionably! But how is he to be provided for in future, should he remain absent some years even?"

"His income, which, from the necessity of the case, must first pass through the form of coming to me, will hereafter be remitted to him in the shape of bills, and directed to him under his assumed name. He will receive it thus through the hands of his banker, in whatever city he takes up his abode regularly. I am thankful he has this certain means of support in his lifelong exile, for, Lilian, he can never return here."

"Never return! Oh, grandmother! shall we never see him again? 'Why should you wish it, child? This is no place for him. He can neither find welcome nor safety here again." She hesitated a moment. "He has forfeited a thousand times over all claims on me, on all of us. I care, disinterestedly of course, for his safety, but this is all."

I remained silent. After a pause, she continued, still speaking with that. gloomy composure that had rarely forsaken her since the night of his departure.

"I have little doubt that he has made his way to, some near seaport, and taken passage to Europe. We shall not hear from him probably until after his arrival, and then only through Bishop Clare, since letters directed to us openly from abroad might awake suspicion. This step is one he should have taken ten years ago, and would have spared him, and all of us, infinite shame and anguish. It is the only one that now remains practicable."

And you, grandmother, will you continue to live here?" I asked, in cold surprise.

Certainly, Lilian; I hope you do not suspect me of the folly of flying in his footsteps! I might have consented to go to Italy, had this exposure never occurred, and have continued my cares for his comfort there, feeling at the same time assured that Jasper would be benefited by the surroundings of art, and my own life prolonged, and yours brightened by the influence of climate and the freedom from scrutiny. Dr. Quintil, too, would have found

a thousand sources of enjoyment denied to him now, and that dreary captivity have been ended for us all. But many little obstacles rose constantly in the way of this arrangement, and before measures could be concluded on —lo, the catastrophe! Henceforth your grandfather must dwell alone."

"Grandmother!" I burst forth, "have I heard you aright? Have you indeed a heart of stone, as you once told me you had? —' Asbestos purified and hardened by fire,' you called it in your mocking mood. Alas! how little I believed you then to be in earnest! I will not believe it yet, if I can help it. Tell me that your words were those of haste, and not of fixed determination! Speak to me! Would you abandon your husband?" I stood before her in the earnest excitement of the moment, and bent upon her inquiring, perhaps angry eyes.

"He has chosen his fate, he has made it," she murmured. "Let him go!" "Is this the time to flinch from his side!" I pursued, "in his infirmity, his sorrow, his approaching age? Oh, God! is it of stuff like this the human heart is made? I cannot - no, I cannot believe in this resolution of yours, because its very foundation is so unstable. Who loves you as he loves you? To whom else are you half so dear, so necessary? What will his fantastic life be in the great whirl of Europe, accustomed as he is to be daily, tenderly cared for with the irresponsibility almost of a little child? A bubble crushed in a moment, a broken reed, a useless toy applied to stern purposes. Such will his life be, grandmother. Turn out your caged mocking-bird to-day to the winds and the hardships of a precarious existence, and the attacks of its kind, inured to self-protection, and where will it be to-morrow?"

'Lilian," she said, with a flashing eye and rising color, "it is too much a habit of yours to measure your own weakness with my strength."

"You overrate your own strength," I interrupted-"your own cruelty rather," I murmured, not unheard by her. “Call it what you may, whether it be love, or pity, or hatred even, the sentiment that binds you to this exile has hold of your heart-strings. Oh! your course has been so firm, so noble, do not forsake it now;" and as I spoke, I threw myself on my knees by her chair, and buried my face in her lap. "Go to him, and comfort him, as you only can comfort," I continued, looking up. "By his very errors and misfortunes, I conjure you to finish your good work, and follow him to the end of the world if it be needful. Leave not your task incomplete -- the task that God has assigned to you. Such a beginning is worthy of a noble ending. Say that you will proceed, dear grandmother."

"No more of this," she said, and with a stern, strong grasp she brought me to my feet. "You preach well, Lilian; by whom have you been ordained?" She smiled bitterly.

'By natural affection," I said, swallowing my indignant tears; “and through that by God himself."

Something in my manner seemed to change her mood, for dropping the sarcastic bitterness with which she had last spoken, she added in low accents: "You do not love Jasper, Lilian, or you could never wish for your grandfather's return."

"Not love him! Oh, you know that I do love him more than my own life." And I stood mute and tearful before her, my head bowed on my breast.

"Do you not know, my child, that as his wife you would incur the hatred, nay the curse of Erastus Bouverie? Do you suppose the old leaven is dead, or that it would be even safe to trust yourself in his presence after such a marriage? Oh, child, you little know all the perfidy, all the cruelty that dwells enshrined in one, whom you in your young romance have made a hero! Of one so unfortunate, so doomed, that his sorrows seem at times, even in the eyes of his victims, to wipe away the long score of his crimes. Lilian, do you recall the first curse of Moses on the land of Egypt? Time was, my child, when the man you plead for had power like this, and the very water I raised to my lips seemed tinged with blood to me by acts of his.”

"Have pity, grandmother! I discard all other claims," I said, thrilled by the mysterious horror of her allusions. "Duty, affection, habit, I surrender these in my appeal for him! I agree with you, they are justly forfeited; but give at least what you daily ask from God-mercy, compassion. Do not forsake your husband in any mistaken interest for me for others. Long before you knew Jasper, he had been your first object; long before the waves of destiny threw me helplessly at your feet, he was your habitual care and charge. We two can struggle on alone, if indeed you forbid us to follow you, but your place is at his side here and hereafter."

She gazed at me long and earnestly before she replied to this passionate outburst of mine, made with clasped hands and streaming eyes. At one time, great tears gathered in her eyes, at another, cold flitting smiles quivered across her face; but when she spoke to me she was calm, and sad, and determined, as one who rises from a last vigil by a coffin now closed forever, stamped with the great seal of the inevitable.

"Lilian," she said, "do you suppose that there is any suggestion possible to your young, inexperienced mind, that has not been more than once revolved by mine?-that has not become familiar even to my thoughts? You appeal to my compassion. Have I not proved the nature of this to the full extent of human capacity and heavenly requirements? I have pitied him, do pity him, morbidly, perhaps; but I also am beginning to pity myself. I feel like that 'Bertha in the lane,' in the new poem of Elizabeth Barret you were reading to me lately, when she 'pitied her own heart, as though she held it in her hand!' Like her, I seem to stand apart, and contemplate the ruins of my own nature, as with foreign eyes. I pity that shattered life that abides in my withered, dissatisfied heart. I pity the being

who might have been so good, so gay, so happy, who is so sad, so cheerless, so bereft! There are times when a rebellion takes place in our own nature against all the laws that rule it, and the shallow despotism of habit and of circumstances is overthrown. I feel this now-every drop of blood in my veins cries out within me for peace, for rest, for freedom, for relief, for a new order of things, a fresher life, a nobler influence! Henceforth I will seek my own happiness, and find it where I can. I will separate the tangled warp of his fate from the woof of mine, and weave fresh flowers on its barren surface."

Oh, vain, vain words, to which no reply was possible!-words destined soon to find their own best refutation. Who talks with any real belief, in any such thing, of that mere chimera of human vanity-the free agency of man? Are not circumstances our laws, and motives our masters? Who holds the clue to these? Would any one be what he is, could he be otherwise by a mere act of volition? Can any one account for his condition, or half the causes that led him to it? We can, indeed, in looking back over the past, see points in our career where we think that we could have paused or proceeded; but how many more do we behold, past which we feel that we have been borne as on the rushing wings of fate itself, without consent or premonition of our own?

How reconcile these apparent inconsistencies? How decide where fate, where will, predominated? How separate the voluntary from the necessary, or the impulsive from the resistless? Answer these questions, oh sophist! who, in thy little range of liberty, darest assert absolute freedom, and pardon me this homely illustration of my conception of a mighty truth.

There is a hen tied to the old apple-tree, in my garden, by a string twelve feet long. Within the limits of this string she can scratch, cluck, fret, gather together her chirping brood. Beyond it, a higher power than she can conceive of, has ordained that she cannot pass. The string, and the shadow of the apple-tree, are the boundaries of her lot-absolute, stringent, indisputable facts, neither to be overcome by her capacity, nor yet by that capacity comprehended. Yet this is a wise and even benevolent arrangement, in which her best interest is considered, as well as that of the owner of the garden. Lives there a being who does not recognize his limits in circumstances, and where, then, is free agency?

Cease, cease to believe, oh children of the dust! that it lies in your power to sever wholly any link that fate has woven around you, even when you seem to have cut it away forever! Natural affection is a zoöphite, and puts forth ever-renewed tendrils. Do not suppose that you can cast forth to scorn, and to shame, the friend, the brother, the child, the wife, the husband, unavenged, who have ceased to be true, or worthy, or beloved.

You may indeed remove from your own home their existence, forbid their names to be mentioned before you, and drive back their memories to the very inmost recesses of your heart. But there are times when the door of that