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drive in the chariot while you talk to Grizzy? I want so to get a few bargains in Oxford Street, and to get another peep at Regent Street; and I am quite ready."

Grizzy gave Ellen a significant look, intimating a wish to get Babie out of the way; and Ellen kindly consenting, Babie, wild with joy, in a black velvet cap and feather, and a plaid scarf, rushed down stairs, scrambled into the carriage, and ordered the coachman to drive to Regent Street.

"I'm glad

"Puir Babie!" said Grizzy; she's left us to converse a little; and it was very kind o' you, my dear, to lend her the carriage; it's a great treat to her, and I only hope she wunna forget hersel, and drive half over the town before she comes bock agin." "Oh, I hope not!" said Ellen, anxiously; my uncle will be quite uneasy about me." "I'm glad, my dear, that you should see how wild the lassie is after pleasure of ony kind; perhaps it'll mak you mair carefu' o' her, when she has na me to see till her. She's a very gude, but a sadly giddy, girl. Aweel,

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aweel! I only hope the mon that wins her affections will na trifle wi' them. Babie, thoughtless as she seems, would mak a gude wife and a fond mother; and now come and sit by me, my dear. I have a good deal to say to you, Ellen Lindsay. It's mony a lang year since I've seen a face I like as weel, and could trust as weel, as your's. Ye ca' back to my mind the friend o' my youth, your aunt; she, too, was an Ellen Lindsay; and as I look at you, I forget a' the long, dreary years that divide me fra' her, and fra' my former sel, and I am again a lassie, sitting wi' her amang the heather and the harebells, she talking o' the heaven where she sune went, and I o' ain that, I grieve to say, was mair than heaven

to me."

She paused; Ellen knew not what to answer to this strange confidence. She remained silent; but there was something in the old woman's manner which affected her, and tears filled her eyes.

"Ah! now ye are her vary sel," said Grizzy; "just so, wi' the vary same een,

would she look up at me, and mind me na to love the cratur better than the Creator. Wall ye ha' patience, my dear, while I tell ye for why I sent for ye?"

Ellen kindly assented.

"Weel, then, I would ha' ye ask yer cousin (I canna name her)-I can never see her, never name her agen, never breathe the same air wi' her—when and how she got that fatal pictur, wha proofs she has that Do......that he loved her? A' I wish is to ken the waur; I ha' worn him in my heart o' hearts for mair than thirty lang years-I will uproot his image, since the reality was fause and unworthy, but I feel as if my heart would na' survive the wrench."

There was certainly, abstractedly speaking, something very absurd in this love confidence from old Grizzy Douglas to young Ellen Lindsay. But yet there was a real depth of feeling and suffering in the face and manner of the old woman, which for once exalted the ridiculous into the sublime, and Ellen could have found it in her heart to weep over the

disappointment of the poor old maid—a disappointment, be it remembered, not in an actual lover, which, at her age, none could have sympathised in, but a disappointment which poisoned the Past, which attacked the hallowed memory of her only love, and dethroned the venerated idol of the worship of her life.

"Bring me the truth, the whole truth, and naething but the truth. Tibby was a wild flirting lassie, perhaps......but na...she has his pictur; that he must ha' given her; she could na ha' got it from his sister... let me ken when and how he gave it to her. She had mony lovers-I never had but ain-na, na, I suld say I never had ain, for a fause ain is waur than nane at a'..."

Perhaps," said Ellen, "he only looked on cousin Tibby as a friend."

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Na, na; Donald o' the Brae was na the mon Tibby, flauntering young thing as she was, could ha' for a friend; it could no be. Weel, I was proud and reserved, na mickle coorted by the men, and na generally reck

oned bonnie, but, for a' that, I was mair than bonnie-I never saw a lassie sa weel favoured as I was in my youth. Wi' a face like Juno, and a heart as proud, I was mair than five-and-twenty before I ever thought o' love, and not then till Donald o' the Brae, having faen ill at our house, I nursed him, I little dreamed o' the danger!...."

Ellen started, and a slight smile curved her lip, for she remembered that Donald o' the Brae fell ill at Tibby's house too, and she began to suspect the idol of these two old hearts was some sly flirt, one of those odious male coquettes who think no disguise too troublesome, no labour too great, to win a woman's heart, yet with no nobler object than to break it when won, or to cast it carelessly away.

"Ye smile," she said, to Ellen; "ah, ye smile, looking at me noo, to hear me talk of the danger o' noorsing a young callant like Donald, but, to mak a long story short, as the song says

She fell sick as he grew well.'

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