miserable Tracy, after casting one more sorrowful look upon the dead, mechanically followed his servant up a winding rocky path; on reaching the summit of which he saw by the grey dawning light his carriage at a short distance. Instinctively he quickened his pace, for Dawson at that moment touching his arm, pointed out a number of persons approaching the Smugglers' Point from an opposite direction. Stepping hastily into the carriage, followed by Dawson, who gave some rapid orders to the postillions, he was soon far from the scene of the tragedy in which he had so unfortunately been an actor.

The evening of the second day saw Tracy safely landed on the shores of France, attended by his faithful valet, who had taken upon himself the whole direction of his unhappy master's flight, the latter never once questioning his arrangements, nor even asking the place of his destination; alike were all places to the heart-stricken wanderer. After several months of bitter anguish and strict seclusion, Sir Algernon Tracy removed to Paris. The stir that had at first been made relative to the duel gradually subsided; the Manderton title devolved upon a distant relation of the late Marquis, who was more gratified at the acquirement of his new honours than solicitous about the means by which he became possessed of them. After enquiring into the circumstances of his kinsman's death, as much as decency rendered necessary, he was contented to let the matter rest, and to drop further proceedings against the unhappy cause of it, more especially as the testimony of the late Lord Manderton's servant (the only person except Dawson who was present at the duel) went directly to prove that the arrangements of the meeting were perfectly fair and honourable, the melancholy result being solely the effect of chance. Under these circumstances Tracy might, without incurring much danger from the violated laws, have returned to his native country; but England was distasteful to him, and he preferred rather to seek refuge for his mental torment in the excitement of change of place. Mixing at first in the gay scenes of Paris as a spectator only, he was, after a time, gradually led into the vortex of dissipation, and ended in pursuing that from choice, to which at the commencement he had merely resorted to as a temporary cure for the mind's disease. His heart's best feelings were sapped and mined, as it were, at the very core; the gloss and glow of youth was all faded and gone almost before it had attained its prime. Deceived and betrayed even where he had most trusted, he learned to look with scorn upon the holiest ties of life, and to deride with bitter mockery the folly of those who put their confidence in human love and human friendship, forgetting in the severity of his sarcasms that his own misery had arisen less from the indulgence of those feelings which are an ornament to our nature than from

the injudicious bestowal of them upon a worthless object. One by one, as years rolled over the head of Tracy, and found him deeper immersed in wild excess, the bright qualities of his youth declined; or, if any by chance remained, they were as the landmarks of some rich but devastated country, serving but to shew what its verdure had been ere

the deluge swept its banks. His early poetical talent, however, grew and strengthened, and it was while plunged in low pleasures, or excited by the maddening influence of play, that he frequently produced poetry of the highest order, and seemed to take a haughty delight in the astonishment of the world, that so much purity of thought and elegance of expression could spring from a source so polluted. His principal residence for many years was Paris, though he occasionally passed his time in travelling through most of the continental countries. The name of Sir Algernon Tracy obtained a disgraceful celebrity for his daring and open acts of vice; fathers would warn their sons against the evil effects of perverted talents and misapplied powers, and cite him as an example; while mothers would mark his approach with disquietude, lest the spoiler, falcon-like, should pounce upon their trembling doves. And, in all this waste of reason and intellect, was Tracy happy? Oh no! the remembrance of the past, the phantom of former happiness still haunted him; not all his excesses, not the wildest excitement of pleasure had power to purchase for him one moment's forgetfulness. What to him was the smile of beauty, or the feverish joys of the goblet? The first passed over his cold heart without awakening in it one answering sentiment of tenderness; and the last, though it might blunt for awhile the sting of memory, only added to the evil by the violence of reaction. He carried within his breast the sting, which, like the scorpion's, was turned against himself. The boon of oblivion was still denied him, and thus he walked through the world, his cup of life all glittering and be gemmed to the eye, but like the Dead Sea fruits, ashes to the lips.

An express from the Countess of Riverstone found him at Constantinople, surrounded by a circle of pleasure-loving friends; it contained a few incoherent lines, purporting to be written from her death-bed, and imploring him as he should hope for peace and happiness hereafter, to see her ere she died. For nineteen long years he had not beheld that once loved writing; her appeal, unexpected as it was, knocked at the inmost strongholds of his heart. Ever acting upon the impulse of the moment, good or bad, and with many a sneer at his own soft-heartedness, he yet obeyed the summons. The nature and result of that interview has been already detailed.

A short time after the death of the Marquis of Manderton, and the departure of Tracy, Lady Riverstone returned to the gay haunts of the metropolis; but though she experienced some slight shock from the fatal event which her own unworthy conduct had occasioned, yet her heart was not touched, nor her principles improved, by a recollection of the share she had had in it. Her career, however, was not one of unmixed enjoyment; notwithstanding her precautions to conceal the real nature of her friendship for her cousin, some suspicion of it got wind. Her long seclusion from society in the retirement of her ancestral castle, with the equally long sojourn of Sir Algernon within its walls, were known and commented upon, probably by means of the insinua