"Nay, lady, I said not that I possessed such knowledge," said the astrologer.

"Then art thou a juggling quack," exclaimed Isabella, "and hast imposed upon my confidence by means of some particulars which thou or thy confederates have gleaned of my history."

"Pardon me, fair damsel," said Almanzor, mildly, “I told thee, that the knowledge thou desirest was attainable, and means shall be adopted to procure it for thee." "Work thy spells then," rejoined the lady, "and I will abide the issue."

"Damsel, it may not be," replied the sage: "a mortal witness of those mysteries would but tempt his own fate, and defeat the spell. I know not, indeed, whether he of whom thou speakest be living or dead; but thus much I can do to satisfy thy doubts; I can cause to appear before thee his effigy-the exact resemblance of his mortal body-be it instinct with life, or sleeping beneath the green sod of the rushing wave. Hast thou courage to look on it ?” 'Courage, old man," said Isabella firmly, "I have courage to endure, or to face any thing that may terminate this torture of suspense. Ay, I will gaze on him, even though he wear the frown in which my thoughtless cruelty has arrayed his noble brow."

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"Then mark me," continued the seer, "and, if thy courage fail thee not, be thou on the terrace, in thy garden before midnight; and, when the first stroke of twelve shall sound from the convent clock, do thou look towards the orange grove, and the likeness of him thou wouldst wot of shall pass before thee, and the moon-beam shall rest upon it. If it be habited as when thou partedst from him, comfort thyself that he is yet in life: if his hair shall hang long and dank upon his brow, then be sure he hath an ocean grave: but, if the garments of the sepulchre be around him, then hath he a christian's burial in a foreign land. But, remember, thou must go alone, and turn thy gaze from the figure when the clock shall have sounded the last stroke of the hour, or evil may come of it.

As Isabella prepared to depart, she put a purse into the astrologer's hand, bnt he, somewhat indignantly, rejected it, and said, "Lady, I need it not; nor may I barter for this yellow dross the oracles which are entrusted to me. Keep therefore thy gold and thy counsel, and be gone, for time is hastening while thou art tarrying, and I must to my work."

The lady bowed and withdrew, and, when she arrived at home, she shut herself up in her closet to ponder upon the extraordinary interview with which she had been favoured. The astrologer had adverted so pointedly to certain of her feelings which she was not conscious of having betrayed, as, in a great degree, to justify his pretensions to the character in which he had appeared; and yet there was scarcely warrant sufficient for her faith in the supernatural power, which he had promised to exert for the removal of her doubts. The hour of the appointment again, and the injunction that she should go alone, savoured of mystery, and, perhaps of peril; while, on the other hand, the terrace was on her own grounds, and was so precipitously elevated above the orange grove, as to diminish her apprehensions of danger from that quarter. Her deliberations ended in a resolution to seek the information she so anxiously desired, by the means pointed out by the astrologer, and, accordingly,

she repaired to the terrace a little before the hour he had named to her, and waited, in almost breathless expectation, for the first stroke of the convent clock. At length it sounded through the valley, and its vibration had not ceased, when a strain of solemn music broke upon her ear, and continued for a few seconds. She bent her eyes in the direction whence it appeared to have proceeded, and perceived a tall figure emerging from the shade of the orange trees, and continuing to advance until the light of the moon fell upon it, when it stood still with its face turned towards her.

Isabella uttered a faint scream as she beheld the stately form of Antonio, attired as when they last parted, but with a melancholy expression of countenance. She pressed eagerly forward to the very verge of the precipice which bounded the terrace, and, stretching out her arms towards the figure, exclaimed, "Oh, Antonio! if it be indeed thy disembodied spirit, speak to me! O for a single word, the slightest sign, to assure me of thy forgiveness! "

While she was speaking, the last stroke of the hour sounded on the clock, and the figure, raising its arm, waved a solemn adieu, and slowly retired into the gloom from which it had emerged. The strain of music was again heard for a few seconds, when it ceased, and Isabella, overpowered by her feelings, sank down upon the grass, and it was some time before she could summon resolution to arise and return to the house, where she passed the remainder of the night in deep musing upon the extraordinary occurrence.

It behoves now to return to our friend the astrologer, whose prescience, it would appear, did not extend to his own destiny; for, the day after his interview with Isabella, he was surprised by a visit from the familiars of the Inquisition, who hurried him away to the Holy Office, with all the portable implements of his trade.

Now it happens that I never was in a prison; whether because I cannot obtain credit or do not need it, is not, I opine, any affair of the reader's; yet so it is; but, I apprehend, in whatever other respects the Spaniards are in our rear, they beat us hollow in the particular of jails. I regret, however, that I am unable to enliven my history by an accurate account of the fast holds of the Holy Office at Seville. The truth is, I fear, that so few of those who have got into it have contrived to get out again, while those who have been so fortunate have had such cogent reasons for being silent on the subject, that the particulars essential to the description have rarely been attainable.

Our conjuror, after having been detained for some time in an ante-room, in which a minute description of his person, and the particulars of his alleged offence, were registered by the notary of the prison, was ushered into a spacious, but imperfectly lighted chamber, containing little else, in the way of furniture, than a few chairs and a long table, at one end of which sat the inquisitor. He was arrayed in a sort of black cassock, which fitted tightly to his body and arms, and was buttoned closely up to his throat, while upon his head was a black cap with a square crown. He was short and somewhat corpulent, but had a most forbidding, not to say ferocious expression of countenance, in which amiable particular he was closely resembled by a half-starved looking personage, who sat uncovered at the lower end of the table, and who might, from his appearance, be described as a sort of mongrel between a scrivener and a hangman.

The inquisitor first directed that Almanzor should be

brought forward, and placed in such a situation that the little light which the apartment admitted might fall directly upon his face. The two familiars, in preparing to obey this order, resorted to what the prisoner deemed unnecessary violence, and he accordingly, with an effort which could scarcely be expected from his age, shook off his grim conductors, and, advancing with a quick and firm step, confronted the inquisitor, who, after regarding him for some seconds with a scrutinising and most ferocious scowl, commanded the attendants to withdraw, and said :

"Old man, it hath been deposed and proved, upon evidence of the most unquestionable veracity, that thou hast been guilty of propounding fortunes, and other practices of a more serious complexion, which necessarily involve the guilt of a league with the powers of darkness. Now, our holy church, of whose tender mercies the edifice on which thou standest is a splendid monument, hath condemned the sorcerer to the flames, as an obstinate and irreclaimable heretic, who hath not only abjured religion, but hath linked himself with her fiercest enemy, the devil."

"Reverend sir," said the astrologer, "if you can prove—”

"If I can prove!" retorted the inquisitor, angrily interrupting him, "have I not told thee that it hath been proved?"

"I would humbly submit to your reverence," continued the prisoner," that is scarcely justice to consider a man's guilt as proved until he has been heard in his defence."

"Insolent heretic!" vociferated the inquisitor, "If thou speak another word before thou art bidded, yonder official shall pluck thy grey beard out by the roots."

"I will not put your reverence to the use of such needless violence: there!" said Almanzor, gravely detaching his venerable beard from his chin, and presenting it to the official "the gentleman may pull it to pieces at his leisure; or, if he be moved to an act of restitution worthy of the justice of the Holy Office, he will restore it to its lawful protector, who is, at this moment, wandering disconsolately on his native mountains, with scarcely a hair between his jaws and the grass on which he feeds."

The prisoner then proceeded to divest himself of the other articles of his disguise, which had served to conceal no less a personage than Don Antonio Gonzalvo de Cordova.

The subordinate Adonis started in evident surprise at the metamorphosis, but the inquisitor, with a slight elevation of his eyebrows, proceeded in his strain of vituperation by saying:

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Ay, I thought that either youth or the devil nerved the arm which shook off thy attendants so easily. So, thou hast in the masquerade of a conjurer been imposing on the credulity of impious and curious persons, to the peril of their souls, and to thy own sordid profit. And thou presumest to make merry withal in this reverend presence. Credit me, thou wilt soon find to thy sorrow, that, in the Holy Office, joints are oftener cracked than jokes; and, therefore, if thou wouldst not have the truth wrung from thee by the rack or the thumscrew, confess to me instantly the nature and extent of thy abominable impostures."

Antonio unhesitatingly answered that, having abandoned his disguise, he had no motive for concealing the truth. He then proceeded to state that he had long and passionately loved Donna Isabella, and that, notwithstanding the apparent coldness and reserve with which she met his advances, he had some reasons for supposing that she was

not altogether so indifferent to them as her deportment would imply. In order to resolve his doubts upon this point he had given out that, unable to endure the damsel's cruelty, he had determined to quit the country; that he had actually embarked in a vessel bound for the Indies, but had relanded on another part of the Spanish coast, and returned to the vicinity of his castle, which had a secret and subterraneous communication with the chamber wherein he had performed the part of the astrologer. He was induced to assume this disguise in order to his more effectual concealment, as well by a remote expectation that, if his supposition of his having excited an interest in Isabella were correct, her anxiety for his safety might impel her to resort to him for a specimen of his skill in judicial astrology, for which his previous knowledge of the private history of many of his applicants had enabled him to establish a reputation; and when he was actually consulted by her as to his own fate, he was tempted to the further experiment upon her affection which we have already related.

When Antonio had ended his explanation, the inquisitor said, "And what warrant, young man, have I for the truth of this very probable story which thou hast attempted to palm upon me ?"

"The word," said the other, somewhat haughtily, "of Antonio Gonzalvo, who, although he may have assumed a disguise for an innocent purpose, is incapable of telling a lie."

"And what proof, I pray thee," continued the inexorable inquisitor, "canst thou adduce that thou art the person thou representest thyself to be? Thou mayest be the Evil One himself, for aught I know."

"Nay," rejoined Antonio, "I have lived long and very publicly in this neighbourhood, and my person cannot but be well known, if not to your reverence, to many of the familiars of this establishment."

"I know nothing of thee," replied the inquisitor, "except that thou art an obdurate heretic; but if thou be, in very deed, the personage thou representest thyself to be, it behoves the Holy Office to see that the wealth which thou hast applied to such vain and wicked purposes be diverted to better objects. I promise thee thou wilt have little occasion for thy riches within these walls, where thy spiritual and temporal wants are likely to be administered to for some time to come."

"Hypocrite and liar!" roared the now impetuous nobleman, "thou hast shewn thy cloven foot, and betrayed the cruel and rapacious motives by which you and your accomplices are actuated in your prosecutions. But if there be justice in all Spain, I will have it."

"Thou shalt have justice, assure thyself," said the inquisitor, "although scarcely by any other measure than we shall mete out to thee, since thou wilt have some difficulty in making thy voice heard beyond these walls."

"But I have friends without them," rejoined Antonio, "whom my sudden disappearance will naturally induce to make such inquiries as cannot fail to discover the place of my confinement."

"Nay," said the inquisitor, with a diabolical sneer, "thou thyself hast taken excellent precaution against that contingency, by giving out that thou wert about to quit the country, and concerting such admirable measures for confirming the report, that nothing but thine actual re-appearance can contradict it. So I think we have thee safe enough, be thou noble or necromancer. Gonzalvo or the devil."

Antonio, who, from the moment of his capture, had consoled himself with the assurance that it was only necessary for him to cast off his disguise to secure his instant acquittal and liberation, was overwhelmed with horror and despair, when he found himself so utterly and hopelessly at the disposal of men, whose rapacity supplied a motive for seeking his destruction, while his own silly freak had afforded them a facility for accomplishing it without fear of challenge or inquiry. It was therefore with a sort of sullen apathy that he submitted, in conformity with the directions of the inquisitor, to be re-invested with his astrologer's garb, and conducted from the apartment, a ceremony which was performed by the subordinate whom we have already mentioned as the rival of his superior in personal attractions. When this official, having disposed of his prisoner, returned to the apartment, the inquisitor said, "Roque!" "Yes, your reverence," responded the other meekly. "Is the prisoner safely lodged ?" pursued his superior. "Even so," responded Roque, "as safely as iron bars and a six-feet wall can keep him.”

"Roque," repeated the inquisitor. "What would your reverence?"

"A cup of wine-I am hoarse with railing."

The wine was brought, and placed before the inquisitor, whose potation did justice to the quality of the liquor: when he continued, "So, so, the damps of this confounded prison get into one's stomach, and need a corrective. Roque!" "Your reverence!"

"Fill thyself a cup, and much good may it do thy meagre carcase!"

Roque did as he was bidden, and, apparently, derived much pleasure and comfort from his obedience, when the inquisitor, who delighted in his retainer's monosyllabic appellation, which was, in truth, a rarity in a country so celebrated for lengthy names, repeated, "Roque!"

"Your reverence!"

"Dost thou know wherefore I preferred thee to the office thou holdest in this establishment?

"To save me from starvation, I humbly suppose, your reverence," said the official.

"Thou errest, Roque, I might have done that by other means."

"If your reverence will pardon my boldness, I would fain ask to what I am indepted for your reverence's countenance."

"To the forbidding ugliness of thine own, Roque, for, except when I have chanced to stumble upon a mirror, thine is the most provokingly ugly visage I ever set eyes

on."

"I am then," said the official, "the more obliged to your reverence, whose compassionate consideration doubtless took into the reckoning the objection which many persons would have to employing a man whose countenance is somewhat ill-favoured."

"Nay, Roque," said the inquisitor, “do not mince the matter-thy countenance is not favoured at all. But thou hast not yet blundered upon my motive, since thy ugliness had scarcely served my turn, but for its connection with another quality which I knew thee to possess."

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May I crave of your reverence to name it?" said Roque.

"Thy chicken-heartedness, Roque," rejoined his superior, "and therefore have I made thee my tormentor in chief, in order that, between us, in our respective depart

ments, we might contrive to let the poor devils off as lightly as might be; and, I confess, thou hast hitherto performed thy part to a miracle. Thy ferocious appearance, and the marvellous tales I have recounted to the grand inquisitor of thy bloody-mindedness, have so recommended thee to his favour, that he feels assured that the little agreeable offices which fall to thy lot could not have been entrusted to better or more barbarous hands. O, Roque, Roque, when you and I shall be called hence--and may that day, for the sake of your sins and mine, be a distant one!—they will make wild work of it in the prison. Heaven help the poor fellows, when they are left to the tender mercies of Miguel de Torres, the grand inquisitor, and his myrmidons! I fear me, however, Roque, that the case of this silly young masquerader will be a difficult one for us. If he retain his assumed character, they will burn him for a conjuror, and that would be a waste of fuel; while, if they discover his real rank, they will leave him to pine and die in his dungeon, in order that, he having no heir, the church may come in for his wealth.”

"With submission," said Roque, "I take it to be your reverence's wish that this young gentleman should escape scot-free ?"

"Thou knowest, Roque, that such has been my desire in respect to every prisoner that has been committed to my reluctant charge, since his Majesty forced upon me the office of inquisitor, for which, as I live by bread, I have no vocation. But this Antonio Gonzalvo, and well I know him to be such, hath taken my fancy hugely. There is some humour about him, and I warrant him, he is an excellent fellow over the wine cup. Didst thou mark him, Roque, in the matter of the beard? By my faith, our inquisitorial gravity was in great peril, and nothing but a reflection upon the serious scrape the poor youth had got himself into kept me serious. His case is a desperate one, I fear, Roque."

"There is the postern, your reverence," suggested the official: "he might be privately dismissed."

"Ay, Roque, but the notarial registry of his committal, and the particulars of his offence, will be transmitted to the grand inquisitor by a channel which I dare not, and could not if I dared, intercept, and he must be accounted for."

"Well, say he died in prison, or under the torture, or took poison," submitted Roque.

"Nay, Roque," objected the inquisitor, "there have been over-many of such deaths in these prisons already: besides, with a poor knave or a simple heretic, (and we have so many of either class, that a score of them would never be missed) the plan might answer well enough, but, as soon as Miguel hears that we have a conjuror within our walls, the superstitious old bigot will never rest until he has burned him. Thou knowest, Roque, or if thou dost not, thou mayest take it upon my authority, that he has implicit faith in the existence of necromancy, and entertains a consequent dread of its professors. Nothing that we can do can save Gonzalvo, I fear. In the mean time, Roque, do thou put a flask of canary by his pitcher of water, in order that he may qualify the pure element, and if he chance to drink the wine and leave the water, it will not be thy fault or mine, Roque. And, do you hear me, Roque, if thou mend his fare by the remains of the venison pasty, the poor youth will not take it amiss."

Antonio, from the moment he entered his dungeon, resigned himself to despair. His only visitors were Roque,

who brought him his provisions, but in conformity to the discipline of the place preserved the most imperturbable silence, and the confessor of the prison, who came to announce to him his condemnation to the stake. As, however, the eloquence of this latter worthy was confined to urging our unfortunate hero to the confession of the crimes of which he had never been guilty, and the acknowledgement of the justice of his sentence, his pious labours were not very edifying or consolatory. It was to little purpose, also, that the holy man essayed to diminish the prisoner's apprehensions of the severity of the fiery punishment he was condemned to undergo in this world, by assuring him that it was trifling compared to that which his offences had secured for him in the next.

On the seventh morning after his committal, an intimation was received at the Holy Office, that the grand inquisitor proposed to himself the pleasure of witnessing the execution of the necromancer, which was fixed to take place within three days, and to which all the rank and beauty of Seville looked forward with as much delight, as do the urchins of our own day to the annual execution of the multiform and immortal Guy Fawkes.

On the evening previous to the day on which Antonio was sentenced to look his last upon the sun, the officials of the inquisition were alarmed by a tremendous explosion, which shook the building to its foundation, and on hastening, with the inquisitor at their head, to ascertain the cause of the report, they found volumes of smoke proceeding from the dungeon in which our hero had been confined: but, how was their astonishment augmented, when they discovered that its late occupant had departed, and left behind him such an intolerable stench of sulphur, that no doubt remained in the minds of those present, that Satan had flown off with his own!-a story, which, supported as it was by some corroborative evidence supplied by the inquisitor and Roque, received the most implicit credence from their enlightened superior, Miguel de Torres, who affirmed that the arch-fiend had performed the exploit more out of personal pique for him, the grand inquisitor, than from any regard for his faithful servant, the astrologer.

On the following morning, the servants and retainers at the castle of Cordova were surprised and overjoyed by the unexpected return of their lord from his travels; and, the legend proceeds to state, that the succeeding month saw him united to Donna Isabella.

Whether he ever informed her of his performance of the part of the astrologer in the ruin and of his own effigy in the orange grove, I have no authority to assert, nor am I better prepared to state if it were ever discovered by the grand inquisitor, that Roque, with the connivance of his patron, had contrived to dismiss Antonio by the private postern of the Holy Office, having previously placed a lighted fuse in half a pound of gunpowder in the vacated cell.

The reader will scarcely need to be informed, that the good-natured inquisitor before whom Antonio had been examined, disguising under a very forbidding exterior and an assumed ferocity of manner the real benevolence of his heart, had devised the expedient of reinvesting the pseudo astrologer with his sage's habiliments, before consigning him to his dungeon, in order that, if an opportunity should offer for his deliverance, he might, by throwing off his masquerade, escape all chance of being recognized as a fugitive convict of the Holy Office. The gunpowder plot

was the joint concoction of the inquisitor and Roque, and was, as we have seen, crowned with complete success. Whatever discoveries were subsequently made by the higher authorities upon the subject, one thing is certain, that Antonio, when he re-assumed his proper character, was too powerful a nobleman for them to moot the point with, nor were the kind-hearted inquisitor and his subordinate Roque sufferers by their humanity.

VINCENT CONWAY.

Vincent Conway was the eldest son of one of the most eminent solicitors in the city of Dublin, and at an early age was called to take an active part in the business of his father. His parent looked upon him with feelings of no ordinary satisfaction-for, contrary to received opinion, it is a fact, that gentlemen of his profession are endowed with some of the best feelings which adorn humanity. The elder Conway was a widower, somewhat unhealthy, and, withal, rather irritable, when buffeted, as he would conceive too forcibly by any of the rude or petty annoyances to which we are all more or less liable, as we bustle through that vast scene of trials and triumphs, familiarly called 'the world.' When in the enjoyment of health, however, and not under the influence of the frailty alluded to, the sanguine old gentleman, with glistening eyes and a proudly throbbing heart, would ponder on the rapidly-expanding abilities of his eldest born, and indulge the fond anticipation that he would still more improve the fortunes and increase the importance of the family, when its venerable head should be gathered to his fathers.

This cherished object of parental solicitude was the theme of general admiration in the society in which he moved; and many, not in the immediate circle of his acquaintance, cordially joined in the buz of approbation which his merits had elicited from his associates. As far as could then be judged, Vincent was of an amiable disposition, although of an ardent temperament, and inheriting much of that sanguine disposition which rendered his father remarkable.— He was however, to use a familiar phrase, only "a good man untried;" he was entering on the world full of stirring hope and sustaining confidence:-to him, life had hitherto presented but one aspect-that of unchanging sunshine—and, like a child enraptured with the brilliant hues of a serpent, he seemed scarcely aware of its power to sting, till he writhed in agony under the pangs which it had inflicted. He knew, indeed, that there were such things as suffering, and sorrow-but he had seen only, not felt, their painful effect.

Time, that "level lays the lofty brow." rolled on with his accustomed alacrity, and the distressful case of an oppressed widow lady found its way to the Conways amongst the multiplicity of business which engaged their attention.The case was a simple but a touching one: the unhappy supplicant's husband, an officer, had fallen in a distant field, and his eager relations, with unrelenting rapacity, were stripping her and her only daughter of the little property which his economy had bequeathed to them. From circumstances which here would seem tedious in detail, and the knowledge of which is in no way essential to my narrative, it appeared that the weakest were about to have the worst of the warfare, and it became the duty of Vincent

Conway to convey the unwelcome information. He had never before visited his client, and he did so on this occasion with feelings excited in her favour.

I have mentioned that an only daughter was left by the departed soldier, to share with her unprotected mother the capricious usage of a sometimes forgetful, and a too often ungrateful, country. Cecilia Sullivan had just attained her twentieth year, and added to a person eminently beautiful, the graces of an education which her parents had deemed not unsuited to her rank in life. Endowed with all the quick and warm-hearted sensibilities of her country women, it cannot but be imagined that Cecilia was keenly sensible to the situation in which her beloved mother was placed, especially when she perceived that the mother's pangs were greatly aggravated by her solicitude on account of her almost friendless child-when she saw, morning after morning, the freshly-added traces of a rooted sorrow blanching her cheek, and dimming the lustre of her eyewhen she witnessed, hour after hour, every oft-used endearment to soothe her tried in vain! And was the poor mother inexcusable? Alas! alas! while to the yet undried tears for a husband's death were superadded those shed for a daughter's destitution, can it be wondered at if her relish for the enjoyments of life should have become blunted, her pulses weakened, and her strength decayed!

Strong are the attractions of beauty, wherever she asserts her sovereign sway. In the festal hall, where the brilliant light lends lustre to fruits and flowers, and overarching boughs, she is like a gemmed Sultana on an eastern throne, the power supreme, commanding adoration. In the blaze of the crowded theatre, when the soul of music soars on its silvery wings, and rapture lurks in every smiling and entranced feature, the witchery of her enchantment is irresistible. But seldom does she look more lovely than when seen behind the veil of retirement, under the influence of the first assaults of sorrow, companioned only by a mourning mother, shedding, as it were, a holy radiance round remediless decay. It is then that we feel beauty to be indeed human-then we can sympathize in all its griefs. On the day of his first visit to Mrs. Sullivan, young Conway had beheld some of the loveliest women of his own rank, unmoved; but, when he found himself in "the venerable presence of misery," and saw the beauty which was its sole support veiling its brilliance, even in the dust, he was pierced-and love, having its basis in compassion, assumed the empire in his bosom. To compensate for the broken fortune of the mother, he concluded his embassy by laying his own untouched resources, with words of everlasting attachment, at the feet of her daughter.

There was one circumstance which Vincent Conway entirely overlooked, in the vortex of delirium in which he was now whirling. It never, for one moment, occured to him, amidst his protestations of devoted friendship and unceasing attachment, that either the sanction or concurrence of his father was at all necessary; and it is but the truth to aver, that the worthy old gentleman never contemplated such a fortuity. There was nothing now, indeed, to offer the slightest interruption to the golden hours which Vincent spent in the company of his beloved Cecilia, except the declining strength of her sorrow-stricken parent. She sank rapidly, notwithstanding all the care which was lavished upon her. The prospect she now beheld was a cheering one; but its irradiating power alighted on a withered heart, which human enjoyment could no more

cherish the very embers of hope were extinguished, no more to be rekindled by aught within the sphere of time, not even by that which is the dearest of all to a mother's heart-the happiness of a darling daughter.

A few brief weeks elapsed, and Cecilia Sullivan was left alone. Excepting the protestations of an ardent lover, she had not a resource in the world that she could rely on as available-but were they not all-sufficient? In the very innocence of her heart she believed them to be so. Yet it was with rather an unusual start that she beheld him enter the apartment on the evening after the death of her beloved mother. He had not heard of the event, though it produced no surprize in him, from the exhausted state in which he had last left her. The hour of bereavement is but a sorry time, and a lifeless mother a melancholy presence, in which to receive the condolences of friendship or the assurances of affection. Situated, however, as the orphaned Cecilia then was, she was under the necessity of receiving them in that presence, or forbidding at once the grateful offerings for she had no other chamber to which to retire-and when her parent occupied her last abode, the daughter was to be dislodged from her sole habitation. And so they stood together the young, the warm, and the affectionate, by the side of the cold, the pale, and the silent—and, if Vincent Conway's theme at such a moment had been other than the consolations of attachment and protection, he would have been either more or less than man. Yes, in that awful presence did Cecilia receive the fervid assurances of unalterable devotion, and her lover, for the first time, press her pale, speechless, and quivering lips to his-and in the eye of heaven they were united.

The grass was springing greenly on the grave of the buried widow, as her daughter passed it to join her hand for ever to that of young Conway. With a palpitating bosom, and a dim and moistened eye, did she point to the verdant hillock-and the heart of her betrothed was with her. He paid an endearing tribute to the memory of the dead, and by a very natural transition, reverted to the sad survivor. He encouraged the indulgence of a seemly sorrow; but against the sullen grief that spurns at reason, and discards even hope, he entered his mild, but manly and even eloquent, protest. His words were words of power: he had an enthusiastic advocate in the breast of his auditor, and ere the admonitory strain had terminated, Cecilia was before the altar.

I have heard of omens, and though I am one whose faith in such things is very slender, I cannot forbear the mention of a circumstance noticed by Cecilia soon after the ceremony. When she entered the churchyard, she had a half blown rose-bud in her bosom; it was the last offspring of the only tree that graced her mother's dwelling. As she passed the grave with the yet virgin name upon her, it was fresh and beautiful-as she returned, it was droopingwithering. Slight was the notice the fact excited at the moment, but in many an after hour did the withered rose bud rise on Cecilia's lonely musings.

"Sweet are the thefts of love!" exclaims the enamoured poet, but in the dull realities of life stern and bitter are their penalties. On an evening in the second week after these stealthily solemnized nuptials, Conway appeared in the presence of his bride with a flushed cheek, and a look so agitated, that even the eye of a stranger would have perceived something tumultuous; something almost beyond control in the heavings of his bosom-but, to the keen eye