round? At all events, Sir Edward Bracton, to outward appearance, held on the prosperous tenor of his way.

This exemption was attributed to various causes, according to the disposition of those who speculated on it. Some thought it the result of unusual skill, and power of mental combination: for, during his residence as a fellow-commoner at Cambridge, Bracton had given no small promise of mathematical talent. His friends, or at least companions, asserted that nothing but the reversion of the fine fortune that fell to him on his father's death, had prevented his attaining the honours of a wrangler. Less favourable rumours, indeed, existed, to account for his success. It was darkly hinted that a talisman, brought by a merchantship from the far East, was always worn round his neck: though even his confidential valet could give no certain account of it, so jealously was it concealed, if indeed it existed. Others whispered, with equal caution (for Sir Edward was as skilful with his small-sword as with the dice-box or the cards), that his practice, if not the result of preternatural assistance, at least lay outside the laws of human honour. No mere give-and-take of ordinary fair-play, they averred, would account for so long and prosperous a run of luck. One son of Mars, indeed, Colonel Reynolds of the foot-guards, undertook to allude to this general opinion on the part of the club. But Bracton, though holding no commission in his Majesty's service, and inexperienced alike in skirmishes and general actions, convinced the gallant member that cold steel may be efficient even in an unprofessional hand. At a meeting in the gray of the morning behind Montagu House, the man of peace succeeded in pinking the man of war: and the Colonel, though gaining by this act (of which the present notice implies no sort of approval) unbounded popularity at Crockford's, wore his arm in a sling for three months after.

This is not the description of a man liked or trusted by his fellows. In truth, Sir Edward was neither. There was nothing about him to inspire the confidence so often given or withheld by a kind of instinct tending, in some instances, to harsh judgment, but not seldom justified by the event. His laugh was one that communicated no sense of cheer. His infrequent smile was a gold glitter. Polished, with a measured, unfriendly courtesy of demeanour, he attracted none who could look beneath the mere brilliant surface presented by a man of splendour and fashion, with the manners that pass current in society. The face was handsome in outline and proportion; but those clearly-cut features lacked all token of such beauty of expression as often appears in countenances less regular. In a word, then, Bracton was an unloving and unlovable man.

Sir Edward was not the only scion of the house he represented. He had a twin brother, over whom he possessed so slightly the right of primogeniture, as only just to make him the elder son.

Edward and Walter were exactly alike in feature, in stature, in voice and manner, in all that seems to constitute identity. As children, and then as boys, some difference of dress used to be made in order to know them apart. Even in after life, their voices could never be distinguished from each other. It became an amusement among their friends to place them in succession in a pose plastique near the diningroom wall, and then, throwing the shadow on it by the light of a chandelier (lamps being future inventions), to make any one of the party, however intimate, guess to which the silhouette belonged.

This resemblance, unusually striking even as between twins, in great measure extended to their dispositions and habits of life. The family taint was upon Walter, as well. His limited younger brother's portion did not permit him to stake the rouleaux of gold that waxed and waned under Edward's hand, nor to sign the "I owe yous" to which the baronet attached his dashing signature on the table and on the spot, and which he so often succeeded in recapturing. But Walter, if more limited in the scale of his gambling, pursued the master-passion with an eagerness as reckless and devouring. From the day when he played chuck-farthing with his father's grooms, and betted on a ponyrace with young Hodges, the son of a farmer who held extensively under old Sir John, Walter Bracton became a confirmed votary of Fortune. Nor did his reputation for fair dealing stand higher than his brother's. He was a member of no club, for he could not afford to be much in town. But at such parties for play as were made up in his neighbourhood, or in the old cathedral city from which Ernham lay some nine miles distant, certain malpractices were from time to time brought home to him, enough to ruin any man's character. Through some momentary awkwardness, a card dropped out of his sleeve. His dice were so suspiciously fortunate, the cings and seizes so frequent, that once the whole party rose up, and called for a hammer and chisel to ascertain their interior structure. But Walter, drawing a pistol, sternly announced his determination to blow out the brains of the first man who touched his dice. And so, taking up his hat, he departed, leaving behind him whatever fragments of good name he might still possess to the mercy, or rather the malice, of a circle he never revisited.

His character thus fatally blackened, Walter was reluctantly induced to listen to a proposal made to him by his brother, which he had before contemptuously rejected, and try his fortune abroad. The baronet had one chief horror in life-that of being found out. His frauds upon society were, in his eyes, like the thefts to which the Spartan boys were trained: laudable, so long as they eluded discovery. But Walter had had the misfortune to be found out. What an awkward fellow! was Sir Edward's commentary, in no measured language, but such as must be diluted in those pages, like other forcible expressions,

of some among the characters to be represented in our faithful mirror. Found out? Why, then, he must go; it is all over with him on this side the Dutch channel.

Accordingly, Walter, with a moderate allowance from Sir Edward, to eke out his private means, set forth on a course of Bohemian wanderings, with his wife and child. He had married a young woman of the upper middle class, who had been attracted by the air noble that still hung about him, like the crushed wings of a fallen angel. She had linked her fortune with his, as a desperate venture, on which her tradesman-father had shaken his head and frowned: and only consented when the health of his child was manifestly giving way under the disappointment. So imperious, so unreasoning, is an ill-regulated affection and if the poets have feigned that love is blind, it must be added that his blindness is often a very poor excuse for his foolishness.

Lucy Wilkinson was a character of no very mean capabilities, and equally great contradictions. She had outgrown and emancipated herself from a narrow-minded education, which, under pretence of being pious, was simply stifling to the soul. But it had not been, as yet, replaced by any better, truer form of Christianity, or more adequate view of life and its duties. The early teaching that had instilled into her mind the proud and morose doctrines of Calvinism had in some measure stunted a soul capable of more generous aspirations for the human race, and worthier thoughts of God. Yet its influence had been a passing blight, not a fatal or permanent injury. She was like one of those plants which, imprisoned rather than nursed in some dank and cheerless nook, away from the genial sunshine and the free air of heaven, has assumed a sickly cast; its attenuated growth seeming to pine and wait for some favourable issue that shall transplant it into a better soil, and develop its latent powers.

Her marriage with Walter, the result, on his part, of a transitory fancy, on hers, of a humble, absorbed admiration of his better qualities, and of the womanly imagination that created others, had not produced happiness or benefit to either. He had soon learned to despise his wife's limited culture, and what he supposed her narrow understanding, and practically to fling her aside. She had found him gloomy, abstracted, self-centred; until, like the Helena of the drama, in her disappointed affection, poor Lucy made up her mind thenceforward to be comforted "in his collateral light, not in his sphere." She was not the first, by many, who had staked their fortunes, heart and all, on one great cast, and saw it go against them. Had she, indeed, entered, by her marriage, into the Nemesis of all the Bracton race, and proved the most unsuccessful of them in her great hazard? It was, at least, an innocent throw for happiness; but the laws of the game take no note, or not always, of the moral qualities of those who meet to try the chances of life. These will come into account at a

higher and a more manifest tribunal, when the final separation shall be made between the friends and the foes of their Creator.

Our next chapter introduces us to the only other member of this limited family; but Helen, the baronet's one surviving child, must speak for herself.

CHAPTER II.

HELEN BRACTON TO EMILY VAUX.

"DEAREST EMMY,-It is not I who am the bad correspondent, but somebody else. Three whole weeks, and not a word! Is Mrs. Vaux reduced to calculate her eightpences so accurately that she cannot throw away a sheet of letter-paper upon the poor recluse of Ernham ? Are the briefs so few and far between, that the bon père de famille, ce grand genie de la robe, is obliged to infringe on his wife's pin-money to provide bread and butter for my little namesake and godchild? Or (what I take to be more likely) is she so happy in herself, so absorbed in her little treasure, who might almost be put into a jewel-box, that the outer world has paled before the light of tiny Helen's eyes? Well, but I claim not to be of your outer world, remember; so we charge you, on your allegiance, on receipt of these presents, forthwith to give tokens of life under your sign-manual, and commit the missive to our slow and roundabout country-post. We hear, by the way, the mail was robbed last night between this and Stourchester, which makes the third time within these two months; so I will charitably suppose that a most affectionate epistle, crossed and written under the seal, gushing, and unintelligible to all but a friend's eyes, full of gossip-all about Mr. Vaux and his daughter, of course-has been dispersed to the four winds with the mail-bags. Fragments of their contents, torn and dabbled, and blackened with powder (for there was fighting over it, I assure you), were found in a ditch by the roadside. But neither the constables, nor the hue-and-cry, reported any letter from Emily Vaux.

"My dear child,—mille pardous, I forgot the dignity of a married woman-but how I should like to have you here! You positively have never been to Ernham since we left New Hall together, and that was full two years before your marriage. And when we met in London, and at Brighthelmstone (shortly before my poor brother Harry's death, when I was with him, poor dear fellow !) we had no time to ourselves, for what I call a real good prose about our school-days. My present life is solitary enough, as you may imagine. My father seems to shut himself up more, as time goes on. I mean, literally so, for we never go anywhere. The neighbourhood,' by which is meant everybody but ourselves, inquire for us, and we are not. Indeed, by this time I believe they have almost ceased to inquire, and take it for granted that, for some reason or other, we choose to keep to ourselves. Now

and then I hear, distantly, the most absurd rumours. Papa is said to be growing quite a misanthrope. Ah, well-with all my filial duty to him, I do wish he seemed to love his kind a little more; but that is between you and me. He is what our housekeeper, Tarleton, called the other day so stately-considerate, like,' and there is no breaking through that polished surface. 'Polished?' she echoed, when I used the word. 'I say varnished-but I beg your pardon, Miss.' And so ought I to beg pardon, I think, for reporting such words. If I ran my pen through them, you would only be the more curious to know what I had erased; wouldn't you, Miss? Let them stand, as an expression of a daughter's regret at an unmistakable and, alas! increasing state of things. Why should he become a recluse in his father's halls? Still on the sunny side of that seven-times-seven, which is said to be the acme of human life: handsome, accomplished, fitted in every way to take the lead in all country interests and amusements, and make Ernham the centre of the glittering ring,' as Mr. Scott says in his new poem (have you read it?—the Lady of the Lake.' It is making such a stir, I am told, and has-oh, such exquisite pictures of Scotch scenery). Alas, when I think of all this unaccountable gloom that hangs over us, I could almost endure the notion of a possible stepmother!

"A stepmother, though, would be incompatible with another wild report which reached me lately-that papa had been corresponding with the abbot of La Trappe, with a view to entering that austere community! I am sure I should wish anything that would be for dear papa's happiness; and that would be happiness of the best kind, would it not? if at his age, and with his unbending character, he could bow his neck to the yoke of holy religion. But I cannot look at him, and believe it for a moment. I wish it could be; for, dearest Emmy, it is no want of charity to say it-you know it as well as I do, and it is an outpouring of grief into your heart, my more than sister-but papa still neglects his religious duties. He has provided everything handsome for our little chapel in the house, so that the thing is a gem in every way, and people of all sorts and kinds, and creeds, and no-creeds, perpetually come and ask to be allowed to see it, as one of the lions of the neighbourhood. But I am afraid he does it chiefly to please me. He is affectionate in his own way, poor papa! I sometimes catch him looking at me with such a sad look, it almost frightens me; at other times he seems half scared himself, at something he seems to fancy he sees or hears. I cannot understand it, nor could I make you understand the undefined, horrible dread that comes over me at such times: what can have happened, or is going to happen?

"For shall I tell you again, Emmy, of a thought I remember to have spoken to you about, one autumn evening at New Hall? Do you remember it? We were sitting under one of the cedars in front