hands to heaven, exclaimed-" May God bless you, excellent young man! May God bless you, as you have blessed!"

The scene was overpowering. Charles Melville wept like a child, and turning round to hide his own tears, he saw the warm drops of feeling streaming fast down the rough face of the turnkey.

What followed was scarcely understood by themselves, so rapid were Frederic's questions, and so inarticulate Louisa's replies; for her tears still continued to flow with hardly any intermission; indeed the only intelligible answers she gave, were the smiles which sparkled through the drops in her eyes, when she raised them to Frederic's countenance, telling him plainly that gratitude was not the only feeling she experienced towards him.

The confusion of first explanations have no business here; Louisa's tale was soon told, and soon understood. Miss Travers, on the death of her uncle, doctor Wilson, after having lived in ease, elegance, and independence

independence for years,

either obliged to look for

found herself

support to her

father, whose income was reduced to nothing, or to go into some family as a governess; and she chose rather by her own exertions to contribute to her parent's comfort, than to burden him to maintain her. Her father, however, who still looked fondly to the coming on of better days, made it a point, before he would consent to her entering the family of lady Delmont, that she should change her name; and unwillingly she took that of Stanhope, which had been the name of her mother's half sister, who married, she said, a gentleman of Newcastle, and died very early.

Lord Burton started, but suppressed the exclamation that struggled for utterance; while Miss Travers proceeded.At Sturford Abbey commenced her first acquaintance with him through whose means she had now been saved, and also a friendship which had nearly proved fatal

VOL. III.

L

to

to her with lady Jane Evelyn. On lady Delmont going to Switzerland, Louisa entered another family in London, without being well acquainted with their character and connexions. Here lady Jane's intimacy with her continued and increased, till in contemplation of her flight with captain Malcolm, she asked Miss Travers to give her change for the very note which proved afterwards to be forged. This Miss Travers obtained for her, giving her name at the shop where she procured it as Stanhope, and her address at the place where she then resided, in Portmansquare.

Shortly after this, the lady with whom she lived was obliged to follow her husband, who was a complete sharper, to Paris, whither he fled in order to avoid the consequences of some of his practices. Being under the necessity of now returning to her father, she resumed the name of Travers; and within a few weeks she was torn from the bedside of her parent,

who

who was labouring under severe illness, to make her abode in a dungeon. The session had already commenced: a true bill had been found by the grand jury, and on her trial it appeared that she had given a false name: the people whose direction she had placed on the note were proved to be swindlers, and her connexion with them in their nefarious practices seemed but too clearly made out. She was totally confounded at the suspicious circumstances against her. Her counsel made. the best defence he could; but her story wanted corroboration in every respect. Lady Delmont had gone to Switzerland; lady Jane Evelyn was nowhere to be found; and her earliest friend, lady M—, had not long before paid the debt of na

ture.

All this operated on the jury. The judge charged them not to think of the youth, beauty, and seeming innocence of the prisoner, but to form their opinion on the evidence before them; and after a

long deliberation, they found her guilty. Her father, just risen from a bed of sickness, and her brother, just returned from distant lands, came but in time to find a daughter and a sister a condemned prisoner in a cell in Newgate. Her father was quite overcome; but her brother having gained some knowledge of lady Jane's route, instantly dispatched messengers in search of her, who found her at Northallerton; and as soon as lady Jane was informed of their errand, notwithstanding the accident she had met with, she sent instantly for a magistrate, and gave a full and clear deposition of all the facts, which was corroborated by captain Malcolm; and these documents being placed in lord Burton's hands by her father, proved the means of saving that very Miss Travers whom Frederic had so long sought, and whom he had so long loved, under the name of Stanhope.

There was so much to be said, and so much to be done, that it was late before

lord