"O Maurice, do you think she is so perfectly artless as that?"

“You do not, I see. Ah, Mary, what woman was ever a true friend to another? I should have thought you might have been an exception to the rule, but it is always the same, I suppose; a woman never likes to hear her best friend praised."

Mary had a little struggle with herself, and then said: "I think she has very fine qualities, and it is impossible not to admire, to pity -"

"And to love her," he quickly added, "and the fewer friends she has, the more we ought to cling to her. To love her only next to what we love best. You will love her next to me, and I will love her next to you."

"Indeed, Maurice, we must not look forward to that, or expect that our intimacy will continue; we cannot be of use to her, and she may do us harm.”

"What nonsense that is, and how selfish, too! I never should have suspected you of such narrow-minded folly."

He turned away with an expression of deep annoyance, and did not recover his tranquillity for some time. It was the first time since his return that he had spoken harshly to Mary. Perhaps she had been unwise in what she had said, and she reproached herself for it as for a fault; but she had seen a rising cloud in the horizon, which threatened his peace as

well as her own, and for one instant had betrayed what it would have been more prudent to conceal. She did penance for it with secret tears and aching reviewals of every word that she had uttered. He did no penance, he shed no tears, he questioned not his heart; but when she received him with a smile, and made his breakfast for him as usual the next morning, and showed no consciousness of offence, he was perfectly satisfied, and thought how comfortable it would be to have such a sweet-tempered wife.

CHAPTER VII.

"Et de ma vie obscure, hélas! qu'aurais-je à dire ?
Elle fut ce qu'elle est pour tout ce qui respire
Sur les mers de ce monde il n'est jamais de port,
Et le naufrage seul nous jette sur le bord!
Jeune encore j'ai sondé ces ténèbres profondes,
La vie est un degré de l'échelle des mondes,
Que nous devons franchir pour arriver ailleurs."

"But what are these grave thoughts to thee?
For restlessly, impatiently

Thou strivest, strugglest to be free.

Thy only dream is liberty,

Thou carest little how or where."

LAMARTINE.

LONGFELLOW.

GERTRUDE stood at her window on one of those drizzling melancholy mornings that impart a degree of gloom even to the most cheerful landscape; and never had the scene she looked upon appeared so utterly uninviting to her eyes. An English park beautiful as it often is does not always present a very exhilarating appearance. The large solitary trees with their sweeping branches and wide-spread shade, the green secluded glades, the absence of any token of human life, the timid herds of deer gliding about amongst the fern and through the distant vistas like graceful and noiseless apparitions, have a peculiar charm of their own, but it is more akin to a pleasing melancholy than to anything like gaiety.

The musing philosophy of Jaques would seem the natural frame of mind which the sylvan and majestic. scenery of an English park would inspire; but there was neither beauty nor dignity attached to the flat stateliness of such a park as that of Lifford Grange. Avenues of not fine trees, clumps of small ugly ones, the flat unbroken extent on every side, the canal-looking river creeping sullenly through it, stamped the whole scene with indescribable gloom, and, seen through the medium of fog and rain, would have presented a cheerless aspect to eyes more favourably inclined towards it than Gertrude's.

If the view had seemed to her ugly from her bedroom window it seemed uglier still from the breakfastroom, where she waited for the appearance of her father and of his uncle her usual companions at that meal. She looked at the tall windows with a sort of aversion, at the family pictures with resentment, at the two sofas facing one another on each side of the chimney as if they had been her enemies, and at the huge clock which recorded the passage of so many uninteresting hours as if it had done her an injury. "I had much rather go into a convent at once," she mentally exclaimed, "than spend my life in this way. I wish Father Lifford would not laugh at me when I talk of it. La Trappe itself would be gay compared to this place."

At that moment the said Father came into the room

with his snuff-box in his hand, his stiff hair

half black and half grey-bristling fiercely round his head, and the lines in his forehead more indented than ever. His slouching gait, his heavy figure, and ill-made cassock made him appear older than he really was. The keen expression of his eyes and the strength of his frame often surprised those who would have deemed him at first sight a feeble old man. There was not apparently any love lost (to use a common expression) between him and Gertrude. If there was any reciprocal affection it certainly did not appear on the surface of their intercourse. He was devotedly attached to her mother, whom he had known in Spain from the days of her childhood. To her he was always perfectly kind and gentle; but towards others his temper without being bad was stiff, and his modes of judging and of dealing with people naturally severe. Between him and his nephew there was a strange mutual forbearance, and an odd kind of regard. That he must have secretly disapproved and lamented his indifference to religion, his want of practical charity to the poor, his omission of many duties and merely decent observance of others, none could have doubted who were acquainted with his own fervent piety, his untiring devotion to the spiritual and temporal welfare of his neighbours, and under a rough exterior the real kindness of his heart; but, however much or little he might at any time have remonstrated with him in private, he never showed