Upon looking at her face more attentively, Reuben recognized the peasant-woman who had procured his apprehension by the soldiers, and raising her from her kneeling posture, spoke to her with great kindness, assured her of his entire forgiveness, and expressed a hope that she would now be happier in her mind.

"Blessings on your head, my dear, kind, young gentleman," said the woman; "but, as to happiness, lack-a-day, lack-a-day! I shall never know any in this world, since I have lost my poor boy. But I deserved it-I deserved it all— for my sinful treachery. You have forgiven me, however;-the Devil will no longer whisper to me out of the pistol's mouth when I am sitting all alone, or lying in my bed. I shall be able to say my prayers, and I hope to sleep quietly o' nights, which I have never done since." Calling down fresh blessings on his head, and shedding tears of gratitude, the poor woman then took her departure, and Reuben, having restored the pistols to his drawer, proceeded to Harpsden Hall.

After communicating the unfortunate result

of his mission, at which Helen was more dis tressed than surprized, he urged the alreadybestowed approbation of her mother, the long neglect of the paternal duties on the part of Lord Trevanian, and implored her to suffer the match to go on without awaiting his consent;

"No, no!” she replied, in a placid but decísive tone; "he is still my father, and though he may perhaps, in some degree, have forgotten his duties, that is no reason why I should be unobservant of mine.

“Surely, my dear Helen, there is little respect due to his Lordship." Encoitattoirs "There is not the less due to myself. He must have been already sufficiently annoyed by poor Adeline's indiscretion, and it must not be said that both his daughters justified by their misconduct the indifference he had manifested. I will write to him; my earnest supplications may perhaps soften his heart, time or accident may bend him to our wishes; but as nothing

but the failure of every other expedient could justify positive disobedience, we have no excuse at present for having recourse to it. Reuber

knew too well the calm steadiness with which she adhered to all resolutions founded upon a sense of duty, to urge his request any farther, contenting himself with her promise that she would immediately write to his Lordship in such terms of urgency as her own feelings might dictate. She wrote accordingly, and with a mingled, touching submission, and affectionate energy of appeal, that might have moved any heart formed of penetrable materials; but his Lordship's awful and chilling stateliness felt itself outrageously aggrieved by this act of insubordination, and he not only refused his consent in the most peremptory, and even abusive terms, to her marriage with the rebel, as he called Reuben, but with much menace and invective commanded her to receive the Squire as her husband, since certain political considerations rendered him a desirable person for his son-in-law. To be urged from such unworthy motives to abandon the man she loved, and give her hand to one whom she detested, and to be goaded to a blind obedience as if she were a mere nullity in the transaction, was not

admission

to

less revolting to her pride than painful to her heart. She again wrote, urging the impossi bility of compliance, and imploring him to yield to her wishes, but her submissive appeals only drew forth violent, and even furious rejoinders; to heighten her embarrassment, the Squire, when he could not gain the house, tormented her with letters, filled alternately with menace and reproach;-Basil, whenever opportunity offered, conducted himself towards her with a passionate warmth of language and manner which she could not understand, and which she was afraid to mention to his cousin, though she failed not to repress it as much as was in her power;-and lastly, that the most tender alarms might be added to her other subjects of annoyance, she lived in daily apprehension of a fracas between Reuben and the Squire, since it had come to her knowledge that the former had given notice to his rival that he would not allow him to continue his visits at Harpsden Hall, when its inmates had so often desired to be freed from his inportunities; and from the desperate and reck

less character of Hartfield, she had little ex-.. pectation that he would abandon his detested, suit.

Influenced by these circumstances, and des-, pairing, after repeated attempts, of mollifying her obdurate father, she began to listen with, more complacency to her mother's advice that. she should consent to a private marriage with Reuben, as the sole means of extricating herself from such a host of perils and vexations. A letter which she received at this period from her sister Adeline had no small influence upon the question. In this epistle the unfortunate Mrs. Gahagan sang a woful palinode, making a most dolorous recantation of all her sanguine predictions, and flattering portraits of her hus band. The Captain, it appeared, had heard in various quarters that Miss Trevanian had been left a free legacy of twenty thousand pounds; he did not know that Adeline had an elder

sister; and she herself confessed that when he

had

d congratulated her upon her good fortune, she had confirmed him in his mistake by receiving his felicitations, though she endeavoured to