might throw a suspicion of selfishness upon his motives. Refraining, therefore, from even approaching the house where she dwelt, he waited impatiently the arrival of the first Sunday after his return, that he might at least catch a glimpse of his Helen at church. His wish was gratified, but his heart was agitated with a thousand tender alarms, when he marked the ravages which a few short weeks had produced in her still lovely though languid and faded countenance. Her features bore a look of resignation -calm, indeed, and placid, but such as inspired melancholy, even if it did not express it; while the mourning that she wore for her uncle, though it rendered her beauty more interesting, imparted to it a still more pensive character. As the same opportunity for observation recurred, he became more and more penetrated with the conviction that she was a prey to some lurking malady, which might perhaps slowly conduct her to the grave. His own health and spirits suffered under this impression; and, as his hopes of happiness in England seemed daily to become more faint and dark, he looked for

ward with an increasing impatience to the now rapidly approaching period, when his coming of age would enable him to execute his long cherished purpose of transporting himself to India, where the discovery of his lost parents, or the contemplation of a new world, and far different scenes, might perhaps confer upon him that peace of mind which he could never hope to possess while he dwelt in the vicinity of the unattainable, but still deeply adored, mistress of his heart.

The mental trials, the conflicts of feeling to which Helen was now a patient, though not the less suffering martyr, were indeed more than sufficient to explain that look of slowly waning health by which Reuben had been so sharply distressed. With all her efforts, she could not tear from her bosom an attachment to the man on whom Adeline had previously bestowed her affections-whose suit she herself had peremp torily and definitively rejected. On this subject Lady Crockatt and Mrs. Chatsworth industriously circulated the most injurious rumours, which stung her to the quick, not only on her own account, but as they interfered with

her pious purpose of establishing the reputation of the family, and procuring a more general reception for her mother; and amid these combined sources of vexation, she was tormented with the sordid addresses of fools, spendthrifts, and fortune-hunters, whom the rumour of her uncle's large legacy gathered around her in swarms, like Arabs beleaguring a rich caravan, and whose daring and hungry importunity she found it impossible to avoid. Among the most boisterous, urgent, repulsive, and at the same time, the most unrepellable of these persecutors, was Squire Hartfield, who had continued desperately following the same ruinous career in which we last left him; gambling, wasting, running in debt wherever he could obtain credit, doggedly awaiting the destruction that was now hastening to overwhelm him, and alternating between fits of roaring false spirits, sullen despondency, and the maddening riot of intoxication. Sir Ambrose Jessop would neither game with him nor lend him money; Sir Harcourt Slingsby played, indeed, but always unwillingly, and always for moderate sums; yet, even in this way, he was so uni

formly successful, that Hartfield was already indebted to him in no mean amount, though he knew the good-natured Baronet would never ask for it, if he did not volunteer its payment, which he was in no situation to do. As to hooking either of them as a husband for Emily, he had angled with such a clumsy and palpable self-betrayal of his purpose, that they must have been gudgeons indeed, to nibble at the bait. Both Baronets now talked of soon returning to London: the presence of such wealthy inmates had, in some degree, tended to uphold his credit, or at least to delay executions and seizures; and he had every reason to apprehend that when they had taken their departure, his creditors would come down upon him en masse, and consummate the ruin and exposure which had been so long impending over his head.

In this desperate crisis the news reached him of Helen's legacy, and it instantly occurred to him that if he could secure her fortune it would not only immediately extricate him from his difficulties, but that by the ministerial influence of her father he might be made receiver for the

county, a situation at that time vacant, or obtain some other lucrative post, so as to secure himself against pecuniary straits in future. He knew Lord Trevanian well enough to believe that if he demanded the hand of his daughter upon condition of his strengthening those of the ministry in the approaching Dorsetshire elections, in which the influence of himself and his friends was not inconsiderable, there would be no great difficulty in the negociation; and as he had set down Helen for a sort of passive, moral puritan, who would glory in sacrificing her own feelings, and yielding an implicit obedience to the commands of a father, he judged this to be the most eligible mode of proceeding. He wrote accordingly to his Lordship with the frankness of a man who is proposing a bargain, and thinks nothing more is necessary than to prove that it must be mutually advantageous. This he did so successfully that the peer, eagerly snatching at any arrangement that promised to ingratiate him with the ministry, and for which he was to give nothing but a daughter in exchange, speedily concluded the contract,