CHAPTER VI. 'Tis too true, oh! my fortune, BEAUMONT and FLETCHER. Most impious epicures! You that are wound up to the height of feeding MIDDLETON. THE next morning I had a bad headache; so I resolved that I would be quiet all the day. Uncle Matthew had gone to St. Stephens' to attend a committee of the House of Commons, so I ensconced myself in his library, attired in a robe de chambre, made out of a Cachemere shawl; and a pair of Oriental slippers, which had a very distingué I stretched myself out on a sofa, and sighed for my friendly hookah-the only appurtenance of an Indian life, whose loss I really regretted. I felt that I wanted something to assist my indolence, for utter idleness is the greatest exertion, when you are determined to force it upon yourself; so I rang the bell for the morning papers, and having conned a speech of my uncle's, I proceeded to study the "fashionable intelligence"-the rumours-and on dits of the day. appearance. In one paragraph there was a list of some half dozen gentlemen of the ministerial party, who were reported as " about to be raised to the peerage," evidently for the express purpose of propping a declining cause, by increasing their majority in the Upper House, the Lords being just then very much at variance with the Commons. Amongst these distinguished names I read that of Matthew Jerningham. "Faugh!" I exclaimed, "'tis a lie -Uncle Matthew the tool of a party!"-so I threw aside the paper in disgust, and began to think of Margaret de Laurier and Ellen Hervey in the same cycle of thought. I asked myself, "What am I about?" It is true that I had not committed myself, that I was still a free agent, and under no conventional obligation; but this was not enough for me. To be honourable in the eyes of the world is not to be honourable in your own: and it was my desire to conduct myself in such a manner, that whilst making myself happy I might inflict pain upon no living creature, however blameless my hehaviour might be. I had learned a lesson of benevolence from my friend Everard Sinclair, and seeking to imitate him, I had much enhanced my natural kindliness. But here I was "between the horns of a dilemma." I was profoundly in love with Miss de Laurier; though I did not yet encourage the belief that there was a reciprocity of passion between us ;-I would have given the whole world to have made Margaret my wife; and I did not altogether despair of being able to bring about the consummation. But I did not forget Ellen Hervey. I was very fond of this gentle young creature; and her happiness was indispensable to my own. I had known her so long, that I loved her as a favorite sister; and to have thought of marrying Ellen would have been too much like incest, in my mind. But then I had renewed my friendship with this young maid, since I had arrived at man's estate; we had met upon the theatre of life as adults, and in the presence of one another we had poured out our souls freely; and though we had never spoken of love, we had communed, as only lovers commune. There are tones, and looks, and gestures, which are more eloquent of passion than words; and when Ellen Hervey and I sate, in her father's house, talking of our childish days, in the dusk of a summer's twilight, we had laid bare our hearts in such a manner, as neither of us would have ventured to have done but in the pleasant society of each other. Ellen loved me; it could not be otherwise; she had loved me from her earliest childhood, and limited as had been her intercourse with mankind, years were more likely to have strengthened than to have effaced the feelings of her girlhood. If she had gone abroad into the world she might have forgotten me; but in the solitude of her home my image was not easily to be effaced from her memory. Besides, I had seen enough of Ellen, since my return from Hindostan, to certify me that her affectionate heart still clave to the first object of her love; and I knew, though she might not have encouraged a hope of ever being my wife, that my marriage with any other woman would be a deathblow to her happiness and peace. "Shall I discard," I said to myself, "the certainty of this young maiden's love for the problematical issue of another suit, which, as yet only in its infancy, may end in disappointment and sorrow." But I thought of Margaret de Laurier, and my half-formed resolution of abandoning her was shaken to the very base. There could not, in the whole world, have been two beings more opposite to one another-mind and body-than were Ellen and Margaret. I should have liked Ellen Hervey for my sister, and Margaret de Laurier for my wife. Ellen was very fair; with gentle, blue eyes, and the most beautiful yellow ringlets that ever glittered in the sunlight. Margaret had dark brown hair, and large hazel eyes; but her complexion was so uncertain that you scarcely could determine its hue. Ellen's figure was slight and fragile; she looked younger than she was; but Margaret's, though perfectly graceful, was full, rounded, and voluptuous, giving her a womanish appearance which you would not have expected from her years. The two maidens, in one picture, would have furnished the finest illustration imaginable of that line of Edmund Spenser's, to which our painters are so much in debted Youth at the prow, and Pleasure at the helm. Ellen Hervey might have sate for the personation of Youth; Margaret de Laurier for the image of Pleasure. I am not sure that, seeing them in a picture, I should not have preferred the loveliness of Ellen; for no painter could have caught the transitions of Margaret's countenance. Ellen was always placid, and her serenity was charactered in her face; but the aspect of Margaret varied with |