bridling, and assuming prodigious merit to herself for hitting upon so ingenious and original a contrivance, which she declared would furnish them a hundred delightful scenes, quite as good as any in a play, communicated to her what she had done. The silly girl had in the first instance intended to conceal the occurrence until after supper, just to see whether her sister would recognize her metamorphosed Arcadius while he waited upon them at table; but having shrewdness enough to recollect that her sudden surprise, should she detect him, might lead to a discovery, and consequently to his dismissal, she thought fit to prepare her for his presence beforehand. All the dangerous consequences that might result from this most indiscreet freak, especially as it would tend to nourish Adeline's thoughtless passion, occurred quickly to the penetrating mind of Helen, and yet she scarcely saw how the mischief could now be prevented, unless by incurring still greater hazards. Reuben's sudden disappearance, after having been formally hired, would excite suspicion, and perhaps occasion him to

be pursued; no disclosure could be made to Lady Trevanian without implicating her in the same responsibility with themselves, which both of them wished to avoid; and Helen could not deny that the disguise might afford an effectual concealment till the appearance of the amnesty, now daily expected to be published, and which, according to the general rumour, would limit punishment to a very few of the leaders, and extend a free pardon, even to many for whose apprehension a reward had been offered. Not seeing any safe and immediate method of extricating herself from the dilemma in which Adeline's imprudence had involved them, she had therefore no alternative but to yield to circumstances, and await the course of events, strictly stipulating, however, with her sister, that she should never speak to her Arcadius, as she ridiculously called him, except when she herself was present.

"

Adeline's exclamations of horror, both in French and English, when she found that Reuben had cut off his beautiful locks, "La plus belle chevelure du monde," would have led

dit

any uninitiated auditor to believe that the preservation of his hair, and not of his head, had been the great object of her exertions. "Let me die!" she exclaimed, "if, instead of being degraded by his livery, his fine figure does not ennoble, and give an air of haut ton even to a servant's trappings. Ah! ne t'ai je pas qu'il était un parfait Amour, un homme fait à peindre? Confess, Helen, that he is quite gentil and distingué-that he has the abord of one who has been used to the grand monde, and looks completely like what he is a hero in disguise." Her significant self-betraying looks as she stole a glance at Reuben while he waited upon them, and then at her sister; her titterings, when, in his ignorance of a butler's duty, he committed some little blunder; or when, in her own giddiness, she half-pronounced the word Arcadius; her exclamations and heroics when any thing occurred that threatened a discovery of their plot; and the general unguardedness of her conduct, tried to the very utmost the composure of Helen's temper, and kept her in a state of anxiety the more harrassing, be

cause she was obliged to suppress every external manifestation of her feelings. Adeline's eccentricities and vagaries were too common, however, to excite any particular attention in Lady Trevanian, though she would not have failed to notice any thing that disturbed the placid and sedate temperament of Helen.

of

Although she knew his birth and real station in society, the latter could not help feeling an almost insurmountable repugnance to any those private interviews with a man wearing a livery, to which she was perpetually urged by the less scrupulous Adeline, whose tender heart could not brook that her own dear darling Arcadius should be altogether metamorphosed into Norton the butler.. She even intimated that she should seek opportunities of conversing with him by herself, since her sister declined being present; and Helen seeing the dangerous extent of her infatuation, at last consented to her wishes, secretly resolving to urge Reuben once more to seize some plausible pretext for quitting the house, and relieving them from the cruel embarrassment of his presence. At this

interview he presently discovered that Adeline had deceived him into the notion that both

sisters equally wished him to adopt the servant's disguise. Addressing himself to Helen, Reuben declared that he placed himself entirely at her disposal that he would instantly, and at all hazards, withdraw when she desired it, and that although he was penetrated with a profound gratitude for the generous efforts she had made to preserve it, he was himself indifferent as to his life, except upon the account of his lost parents, of whose history he gave a brief relation, concluding with the expression of his unabated hope that they would one day be restored to his embraces, if he lived; while he declared, that if he died, he was fully deter mined not to entail ignominy upon them by being gibbeted like a common malefactor.

There was something so touching, so pathetic, in the tenderness and fervour of his filial piety, when alluding to his parents; his misfortunes, heavy and almost unprecedented as they were for one so young, were borne with so resigned a fortitude, though not without having im