fondest affection that a sister could feel; she admired him as one of the brightest of human beings. But now it would have been hard to say which was the dearest to her, Frederic or Charles; it would have been a question painful to her heart, and wisely she never put it; but, notwithstanding, she felt a great deal of consolation in Charles's society.

For his own sake, Mr. Melville was as sorry for lord Burton's leaving them, as he could be for any thing while Mary remained with him. There were few men he had ever met with endowed with such superiority of mind and person, that had such attaching qualities as his cousin ; but his love for Mary was the absorbing principle which engaged every feeling of Charles's mind; and engaged in diverting her attention from the absence of her brother, he soon forgot it himself.

One of their most constant amusements after lord Burton's departure was sailing in the bay. Mary had now become a

very tolerable performer on the Spanish guitar, and floating about on the clear sunshiny waves, they would sing together all the duets and songs which had been their delight in England, before they knew the nature of those sensations, which made the harmony of their voices seem but an echo to the feelings of their hearts. Nor to lady Anne Milsome were those moments at all tedious; what they felt had, with her indeed, long gone by; but she remembered the days of her youth; disappointment had never crushed the warm affections of her heart, nor had time had the power to steal them away. They were softened, but they were not lost; and like the rays of the moon, they were gentler, but not less sweet, for being but the reflection of brighter feelings.

About a week had elapsed since lord Burton had left them, when sailing along the shores of the bay, their boat was steered directly under the cliff on which stood the villa they inhabited. The tide was

out,

out, and there was a little bit of dry beach, on which they landed, without any particular object in so doing. However, in wandering about the shore, Charles discovered a small path, which leading up the face of the rock to about a yard above the high water-mark, conducted them to a cavern of nearly thirty feet in depth, whose entrance commanded an extensive and beautiful view of the scenery around. After standing for a few minutes to observe the prospect, Charles turned to examine the cave itself. It did not possess from nature any particular attraction; but the fragments of a strong chain caught his attention; and on looking farther, he found that the place was regularly divided into two apartments, the interior of which contained a rough iron bedstead, a heavy cavalry sword, and some linen died in blood. The sword was rusty, as also the bedstead; but neither bore any very great marks of antiquity. They nevertheless proved, that

the

the spot where he stood had not long be'fore been trod by other feet than his.

Charles raised the linen on his stick, and brought it forward to the light, at the mouth of the cavern." Some one has been murdered here, I should suppose," said he, as he looked at the evidence of blood having been spilt there. Mary shrunk back from the sight, and lady Anne was so terrified, that she would not stay another moment, though Charles much wished to have examined farther; but bound in gallantry to follow them, he was obliged to give up the search for that day. His mind, however, was not satisfied; and though to prevent them from being alarmed, he affected to make a joke of the whole affair, he took an opportunity of returning by himself a few days afterwards. Nothing new, however, presented itself; he found every thing exactly in the same position in which he left it; proving, that in all probability, no one had been there since. He went to the bottom of the cave,

and

and examined it minutely all round; but there was nothing farther to be seen; all was simple and plain, extending no deeper than he had at first supposed; and the only thing he discovered, in addition to what he had perceived at the first view, was a trace of blood from the mouth of the cave to the iron bedstead.

Whatever event occurs in the world, people immediately set out to explain all the whys and wherefores, and to resolve all the difficulties connected with it, without having any data to guide their judg ment. They at once fix upon an hypothesis, which they prop up by a thousand subsequent theories; and having built a goodly fabric, from the materials supplied by their own imaginations, they are surprised when they find a single breath overset it all, like a child's house of cards, which, though it cost some trouble to put together, requires but a touch to reduce it again to the flat nonentities from which it was raised. Few people were more given

to