it was addressed to the quick; but its uncharitable object was in a great measure defeated by the very pains which had been bestowed to ensure its success. There was something so vulgar, cold, and unfeeling, in its character altogether; such a pitiful insolence in making a secretary the medium of communication upon so delicate a subject; such a total want of paternal as well as of conjugal feeling; that the pride which enabled Lady Trevanian to resist every direct insult, rendered her nearly callous to the blow. It afforded her even an excuse for again laying the flattering unction to her soul, that her husband's notorious heartlessness might in some measure excuse her own mis. conduct; while it supplied an additional confirmation that no fidelity on her part could ever have reclaimed and attached so worthless a mind. She forgot, however, to add, that she had never tried the experiment; and that, if she had even attempted it, and failed; a husband's aberrations can never be pleaded as a justification of the wife's.

CHAPTER IV.

"O Heavens !

Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
Making both it unable for itself,

And dispossessing all my other parts

Of necessary fitness ?"

SHAKSPEARE.

ABSENCE, it has been observed, cools moderate passions and inflames violent ones; as the wind blows out candles, but kindles fires. Of the first assertion Adeline had recently afforded a sufficiently striking example, and Reuben was now offering an illustration of the second, for although he had been separated from Helen for a considerable time his love seemed rather to increase than diminish. Perhaps it was rendered more profound and tender by the touching sight of her waning bloom

perhaps by the recollection that he was soon about to tear himself away from her, in all probability for ever, and to interpose a whole hemisphere between himself and that which he loved dearest upon earth. Conscious at once of the intensity and the hopelessness of his passion, he longed for any change that might promise a relief to his harassed feelings, and looked forward therefore with a daily increasing impatience to the period of his departure from England and from Europe; for however painful and violent might be the wrench of total separation in the first instance, he believed that distance might mitigate his sufferings, and that he might gather a consolation even from despair. In this frame of mind he loved to haunt the seashore, since all the associations that it suggested connected themselves with his lost parents and his meditated voyage to India.

Upon one of these occasions he found himself roaming along the sands at a small distance from the lofty cliffs. The night had been wet and stormy, and though the violence of the wind had abated, the sky was still surcharged

with lowering clouds, while the waves retained a sullen and portentous swell, and retreated with an angry growl, as if the wrath which had so lately enchafed them were only half appeased. Here and there the gulls which had been driven to the refuge of the cliffs, were again venturing out to sea, contrasting their white wings, as they sailed in the air, with the murky clouds, the lurid ocean, or the round black back of the porpoise as he floundered and tumbled beneath them. A dark rugged line of sea-weed thrown up by the night tempest fringed the shingles as far as the eye could reach, while lower down where the waves were still rearing and butting at the shore, the sands were whitened with froth and foam.

He wandered on for some time, lost in meditation, until on heading a projecting point of land, he beheld at no great distance a shattered and dismasted vessel which had been driven ashore in the night, was lying upon her side, and had bulged. After repeated attempts a hawser had been got ashore and fastened round detached fragment of rock; to this a sliding

a

noose had been attached, and by these means, for all the boats had been washed overboard or swamped, the remainder of the crew were dragging themselves to the shore just as Reuben came in sight. Hurrying up to the spot to render such assistance as might be in his power, he learnt from one of the sailors that the vessel was a trader from Ireland, and that the whole crew were now safely landed except one man who was then seen leaving the vessel.

watching the

Of this last individual, he was progress with an intense interest, when a strange, ominous, and rumbling sound, startled his ear, instantaneously followed by a loud and thundering concussion, which shook the solid rock on which he stood like an earthquake, while the terrified gulls, cormorants, and other sea-fowl, scudded screaming from the spot in all directions. Turning suddenly round, he perceived that a huge mass of the stupendously lofty cliff, loosened probably by the rains, had fallen in gigantic ruin upon the beach, throwing up a cloud of white dust as the chalky fragments were crushed and crumbled by one another.