turb it." "Why should you, indeed?" she ejaculated with unaffected surprise. He smiled, but felt a little disappointed. Why, he could scarcely tell. She did not guess his thoughts; how could she? But others had done so, and life becomes flat and stale when everything has to be explained, and he could not always explain himself even to himself; and a cloud was on his brow as he shut himself up in his room, and flinging open the window he threw himself on his bed, and snatching up a pencil and paper he began to compose, but not music. His mind was not tuned to harmony just then, but he wrote rambling verses, and went to sleep with some unfinished lines in his hand.

CHAPTER V.

"Noble et légère elle folâtre,
Et l'herbe que foulent ses pas,
Sous le poids de son pied d'albâtre,
Se courbe et ne se brise pas.
Sur ses traits, dont le doux ovale
Borne l'ensemble gracieux,

Les couleurs que la nue étale
Se fondent pour charmer les yeux.
A la pourpre qui teint sa joue,
On dirait que l'aube s'y joue;
Son front léger s'élève et plane
Sur un cou flexible, élancé,
Comme sur le flot diaphane
Un cygne mollement bercé."

"Music is the food of love."

LAMARTINE.

SHAKESPEARE.

How strange it is that people think it worth while to make the best of themselves to themselves, to equivocate with their own consciences, and lie to their own hearts, while all the time they know it is of no that it is the shallowest of deceptions

use

that even a Queen's speech, 、or a ministerial harangue are not more devoid of any pretensions to sincerity, than their special pleadings at the bar of their own understandings. But still the inward and intimate sham is carried on, and doubtless, the thief and the assassin have an internal advocate who presses for an acquittal,

even while the dagger is sharpening and the booty secured. There are some, indeed, who never appear to commune with themselves, whose minds are like railway travelling, never stopping but at certain stations, never looking beyond a certain terminus.

Mr. Lifford might have been of this number, and if so, his mental line of road must have lain through the dullest and dreariest of intellectual regions. It had gone on its way crushing and extinguishing in himself and in others everything that gives light and joy to existence. Whether, in the language of St. Paul, his thoughts ever accused and excused one another was doubtful. Perhaps he was too essentially despotic to allow even of inward remonstrance, and the rebellion of his own conscience, if it ever broke out, was put down by the iron rigidity of his will.

But in his daughter's character there were other elements at work besides that same will, which she had inherited from him. Some of the tenderness of her mother's character was mixed with it. This had seldom been called forth, but a gleam of it was now and then visible which took by surprise those who were accustomed to her reckless moods, and her stubborn resolution. She had one of those natures that could not be governed by ordinary means, and like the Spartan boy she would have suffered a thousand tortures before she yielded the threats or submitted to violence. Two or three times, between the

age of childhood and that at which she had now arrived, she had come into open collision with her father. Once, in a paroxysm of passion, an imprecation escaped her lips, which the instant it was uttered terrified her to that degree, that she gave a scream of horror, and fell on her knees before him. If he had opened his arms, she would probably have loved him from that moment with all the energy of her strange character. Had he been moved to anger or to indignation, she would have continued to sue for pardon and reconciliation; but he left her with a sneer, and she remained alone with her remorse and her anger, and neither could master the other, till some days afterwards in confession that secret arena where so many fierce battles with self are fought the proud spirit yielded; and, after shedding torrents of tears, pale with emotion, she went straight from the chapel to her father's room, implored a forgiveness which was coldly granted, returned to the feet of one who as his Lord's representative was always kind though at other times stern, and who, after absolving and blessing her, dismissed her in peace.

Good was it for Gertrude that she should have known what such a conquest effects, what such a moment is. She never forgot it. There are seeds sometimes sown that lie for long years under a hardened surface, but the rain may some day fall, the sun may one day shine, and the harvest may be reaped.

There was one element in Gertrude's character which resembled neither father nor mother, and that was a wild gaiety - which was particularly attractive in one as beautiful, as naturally clever, and as original as she was. It was almost impossible for any one to resist its fascination. Even Father, Lifford who thought it bordered on levity, and conceived it to be rather a point of duty to snub her could not help at times feeling its influence, and when she succeeded in making him smile it put her in good humour for the rest of the day, as she used to tell Mary Grey.

It would have been impossible in so dull an existence, and with such a craving for change and amusement of any sort, that the return of an old playfellow who formerly contributed so much to her enjoyment should have been indifferent to her, or that she should not have been ready to renew an acquaintance which had once given her so much pleasure. His letters to Mary had interested her imagination; she felt curious to see how far he was in love with her quiet friend, and whether her feelings for him had any tinge of romance, or partook of what Gertrude considered the common-place nature of her character, for thus she estimated one of the most uncommon-place persons in the world, one of those rare self-forgetting natures that have more feeling than passion, more heroism than courage, and more tenderness than sensibility.

A day or two after the meeting at the bridge she

Lady-Bird. I.

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