she must be an old maid, for there's no one abroad can marry her, I'm sure! Well, it's no fault of mine. What, crying still! how silly you are, Augusta!...."

"I am miserable," said Augusta. "Poor

Julian!"

“Pshaw about Julian!.

He'd be poorer

still with a crying wife and starving children! you ought to rejoice! You'll thank me, some day, my dear, for not letting you please your eye and plague your heart. your looks! Go and dress.

Peter how well he drives!

There, don't spoil

Here comes Sir

Wait till you

can be miserable in a coach and four. There, get ready-come, there's much to be doneit won't do to let him slip now. I'll amuse him while you dress-let him see no trace of tears! I cannot think what your uncle had a long tête-à-tête with him about. Ah, well! it doesn't much matter; he's gone now. I wish I could have kept my temper; but how could I see all those horrors eating me out

of house and home? By the by, Capricorn (old demon) is to go back to Lindsay Park to-morrow I declare I feel quite myself

again."

Not so Augusta. Did she ever feel herself again? Oh! pitiless Matchmaker, what have you done?......

CHAPTER LIX.

"Happy, if full of days-but happier far
If ere we yet discern life's evening star.
Sick of the service of a world that feeds
Its patient drudges with dry chaff and weeds,
We can escape from custom's idiot sway,
To serve the sovereign we were born to obey."

Cowper.

The journey, though performed with four post-horses, was long, and but for Ellen would have been tedious. But Ellen possessed the rare art (an art, by the by, of all others, to be cultivated in woman) of cheering and enlivening others, even when there was nothing to animate or excite herself.

In large circles she was often silent; frequently at dinner-parties, the repartee her wit suggested, her modest reserve and good

taste suppressed. She was a quick and humorous observer, had a rare insight into character, (for one so young) and read with a calm, and, therefore, unsuspected glance, the hidden motive, and the secret aim: she told an anecdote or a story with an arch and irresistible naïveté, and had a power of imitation, which, in one less truly and nobly amiable, would have made a confirmed mimic.

After the first sorrow of parting with her mother and sister was over, she devoted all the varied powers of her rich mind to the amusement of her uncle, whose ruin sate so lightly on his philosophical spirit, that he laughed as heartily as he had ever done when his wealth was boundless as his benevolence.

The Reverend Gregory, although professedly there, to keep his brother company, to counsel, and to assist, was soon, with a scholar's absent habit of mind, lost in learned reverie; and Grunter, the sham sage, not choosing to be outdone in so learned a charac

teristic, cast up his eyes, folded his arms, occasionally muttered to himself a Latin quotation, generally, (we blush to own it) not drawn from any deeper or more abstruse source than that Eton Latin grammar, by which so many years of his former life had been engrossed; and appeared quite deaf to all ordinary remarks, and blind to all common-place occur

rences.

The Reverend Gregory had soon fathomed the shallow brain of the old usher, but respect for his brother, and a great dislike of giving pain, (even to a pretender) made him scrupulously conceal his opinion of Grunter's inferiority. It could only have been gathered from his resolution in avoiding all classical discussions with him, (in which, in truth, Grunter was very ready to assist him) and a something of overstrained modesty in the way in which he said occasionally, "We readers, and you writers;" implying, perhaps, that Mr. Grunter, though a writer, had not been