lighten my heart. All my paths shall be direct; and the few words I shall utterfew certainly shall I ever address to a father -shall at least be unstained with duplicity and falsehood."

In these artless strains did this poor inexperienced youth pour out his sentiments to his flinty-hearted father. The commodore was inexpressibly astonished at all that he heard. He had not doubted that his son, every thing that he had ever yet known of him being made up of a shrinking and sensitive diffidence, would have felt annihilated, and incapable of uttering a word, before the anger of his father. The commodore had cruelly wasted his great-guns upon him, at the same time that he believed, that the smallest intimation of his pleasure would have deprived Audley of all power of resistance, and that, where he condescended to interfere, the whole question was settled in a moment.

CHAPTER IV.

MEANWHILE, though the commodore was absolute and dictatorial in his temper, he was not at the same time without his wiles. The enemy that he could not conquer by force, he was not indisposed to take in by stratagem. A view had just opened upon him, that he had not in the smallest degree anticipated; and he drew in his fierceness. He had the prudence to stop in his career, and allow himself time to revise his measures. He muttered words of resentment and menace; but what he said was confused and incoherent; and he abruptly ordered the youth from his pre

sence.

All that had passed thus far, had proceeded without impediment or reflection. The commodore no sooner heard the unwelcome information from his sister, than he acted upon it. It was most congenial to his temper to use decisive measures; and, where he thought he could settle a business. at once, he did not relish the subjecting himself to protracted trouble. But, before his interview with his son was over, he recollected an appointment that had been made with a distant relation of his late wife, who had undertaken to conduct Audley to London, and initiate him in those scenes of populous and busy life, which were so remarkably contrasted with any thing the youth had yet witnessed. From the scene which had just passed, and the unexpected resoluteness Audley had displayed, the commodore began to think, that whatever steps might be taken for the summary removal of Amelia, it might be more prudent to take in his son's absence. Every thing now

passed in quiet for several days; the commodore's fury seemed to have evaporated itself in threats; and Audley, unskilled in the treachery of the world, suffered himself to be lulled into the same security, as before this explanation had taken place. He thought of his father only at rare intervals ; but Amelia was always before him; he was in her presence as often as he pleased; he dreamed of her every night, and in these few days he had advanced whole years in love. The affection that reigned in his bosom, contracted in some nameless way new sweetness, from being now looked upon as a thing forbidden; at the same time that he had so little meditation and calculation for the future, that he lived with his whole soul in the present time, and was contented. To say all in a word, Audley was constitu tionally a dreamer; and his day-dreams, as always happens in this disease, moulded themselves in correspondence to the prepensity of his mind.

At length the cousin arrived with whom his journey was to be taken. The course of Audley's life had been uniform; and this had infused into him a sort of vis inertia, a disposition opposite to that of " such as are given to change." When he thought of London as a vision only, the thought was by no means without its attractions; but when the time came that was to turn it into

reality, he shrunk instinctively away, and wished the engagement had never been contracted. He could scarcely remember the time when he had slept out of his own bed; the sort of prison-life he led under his father's roof, made him but so much the more completely master of the arrangement of his time; all the little machinery of his studies was about him; but, most of all, he must leave Amelia behind him; and he felt that the whole world would be a blank to him, where she was not present. Amelia however was zealous to press him to the expedition; she declaimed earnestly, but