bert sate with folded hands beside a table strewn with papers, and when Henry entered he did not look up. The servant announced him again in a louder tone. Sir Herbert then gazed at his nephew, who stood with all the indignant selfimportance of an Etonian who considers himself slighted, tapping his boot with his cane, and trying to appear unconcerned. Sir Herbert, evidently far from prepossessed in his favour, coldly gave his hand, which Henry took very cavalierly.

"Welcome to the abbey," said the uncle with an air that seemed to say, "Welcome to your grave;" and added, observing that Henry's angry colour rose, "Welcome, I say, if you make no noise, if you obey Miss Matthews, and behave like a man."

By this time Henry's spirit was completely roused, and thinking he could read at a glance the character of his stern old uncle, he replied half jocosely, "I have given up making a noise, Sir; I will obey Miss Matthews if she is young and pretty, and behave like a man if I am treated like one."

"You shall learn to control that flippant tongue of yours. Go to your room and dress for dinner, when you will have an opportunity of judging of Miss Matthews's beauty," he added in a milder tone as he rang for the butler to show him to his apartments.

"Young and pretty! forward fool! So then I find my fears of being tormented by a troublesome child, changed for the certainty of being disgusted by the airs of a would-be man. Youth and beauty! Is he so ready to be led astray by the ignis fatuus of the young? "Tis well that Emily is but a child, and Miss Matthews plain and middle-aged. Yet 't is a noble creature, and recalls to my mind that never-tobe-forgotten, that fatal face. I felt my heart grow young before the frankness of his smile; but I am ashamed of a weakness which long years poisoned by her fickleness should have rent from my heart."

Sir Herbert was a tall stately man; he had served in the Guards, and a military air distinguished him even at the time of which we

write. His countenance, of a Rembrandt kind of gloom, had great beauty of feature. Over a pale high forehead waved the careless masses of once jet black hair, now streaked with silver. He was slightly bald toward the top of the head, and in consequence the forehead had the gloomy height which gives so much melancholy to some of Vandyke's portraits: and his large dark eyes varied in expression from intense melancholy to a wild and frenzied recklessness. His face would have been perfect, but that the habit of indulging vain regret (perhaps remorse) had drawn down the corners of his well-formed mouth.

His story was a sad one. In youth he had been the handsomest man of his day, the leader of fashion and the idol of the fair; but though he mixed with the frivolous and led them for a time, he scorned their pursuits, and despised them from his heart. Disgusted with fashionable life in England, he travelled. At Florence he met, for the first time since she had grown up, with his cousin, a girl of surpassing beauty,

the most enchanting witchery of manner, brilliant imagination and coquettish character.

Sir Herbert had never loved; he had trifled, he had fancied one pretty face after another; but of deep, involuntary passion he as yet knew nothing. Camilla Etherington heard that he was invincible, and determined to subdue him. For this purpose, and for this alone, she exerted all the magic of her fascination and all the power of her beauty. He loved with all the intensity of an impassioned character; he revealed his passion, to find it disregarded; he told her of his deathless affection, to hear in return that her heart was engaged to another. He named the man he deemed his rival; the thoughtless girl would not satisfy him; this man was his friend, this very man had dissuaded him from proposing to Miss Etherington, had, as he thought, supplanted him. "Villain! traitor! should he succeed?" He hastened to the public walk, insulted him grossly: they met; his antagonist fell. All was explained; he was not his rival, and Sir Herbert Fitzherbert re

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turned to England heart-broken, the blood of his friend upon his head, still madly doting on the beautiful cause of his ruin, and hating with a desperate ceaseless hatred the thoughtless man by whom she had been encouraged to make this trial of her power, and to whom, subdued and indeed entirely changed in spirit by the mournful result of her coquetry, she gave her hand.

Sir Herbert returned to England; but in the gay haunts of fashion he was seen no more. Vainly did the fathers of accomplished maidens leave their cards; he returned no visits: vainly did devoted mothers try the power of crow-quills and pink paper, point out the delights of "their cheerful homes, ""their united families," "all eager to cheer and soothe Sir Herbert.” "Laura would play his favourite airs, and even little Hebe would do her best to amuse; would he not say 'yes!' and make them all happy?

The Court, or the Priory, or the Grove (as it might be,) looked so refreshing after odious, dusty London, and Sir Herbert's excellent taste