being perfectly well-bred. No one, therefore, could say (not Mr. Hastings himself) that he was not a proper partner for Mr. Hastings' daughter: nor did Mr. Hastings' son think him by any means an improper companion for himself.

But this, I thought, gave no right to Charles to address me as he did, especially as his seeming fear of my presumptuous intentions, instilled into him, no doubt, by Mansell, was the reverse of founded. Of this I informed him in a tone as distant as his own—indeed, with a sort of haughty indifference, under the guise of an assurned humility, surprising to myself as well as to him.

"I beg to tell you, Foljambe," said I, "in the first place, that you have been most grossly misinformed, for I never had the intention, much less the actual presumption, to present myself as a partner to your sister. Nor need you have been so careful to remind me that I am still the very humble person she, as well as yourself, once condescended to notice. Your fear, therefore, that I should even attempt to stand in the way of your friend, Sir Harry, is at least groundless, and your caution, for which, however, I thank you, might have been spared."

The effect of this speech, I own, gave me pleasure. I saw that he was disconcerted. He reddened, bit his lips, and his air of superiority almost abandoned him. But as he expressed no compunction, and seemed ashamed of appearing ashamed, I was at no pains to ask or give further explanations. A sudden elevation of feeling came over me, and, for a moment, I thought myself his equal. I had loved him well enough to give an under look, to see if there were a stretched out hand of offered reconciliation; but none appearing, I turned upon my heel and left him, with a disgust far from concealed.

At first I thought of quitting the room, but this my newly called up spirit forbade, and, with a boldness which astonished my own mind, I walked to the top of it, just as Sir Harry and Bertha had left off the dance. Will it be believed, that I saw it without any other emotion than that of insulted pride. And yet of pride, Bertha, the dear, the natural Bertha, had never herself been guilty. She had been grave and reserved in the morning, but afterwards had delightfully renewed the frankness and vivacity which belonged to her

proving that if for a moment she had changed, it was, perhaps, to check the liberty of my own eagerness, or perhaps, as I now began to think, influenced by her brother and cousin. No; with this loved being I had and could have no quarrel, for to see her was to put you in good humour with yourself and all the world.

Not so with her brother, my former friend, now I feared, my estranged acquaintance. The words "You will not succeed; to be fair with you, my father will be displeased," and "I have engaged her to my friend Sir Harry-" these words tingled in my ears, and gave many a quick beat to my pulse; and though my heart swelled as I beheld his sister with inimitable grace coming down the dance with a partner, it must be owned, very different from her awkward cousin, yet the renewed slight I felt her brother had put upon me, in his own and his father's name, made me survey Bertha herself with something like defiance.

Well, thought I, as she flitted by with the happy Sir Harry, let him plume himself upon his fashionable, and forget his Sedbergh friend-what is he, or even this sister of whom he is so chary, to

I would have said me (with whatever sincerity), when, as strange fortune would have it, an accident put a stop to all reflection, in calling upon me to exert myself to save the principal subject of it from (in a ball-room at least) an unpleasant situation ;-for the end of one of the ropes, which separated the dancers into two sets, having been heedlesly left on the floor, caught her light foot, and losing her balance, she would have fallen on her face, had not I, who with all my pride was anxiously watching her, caught the hand she stretched out for help, and, though not without effort, prevented an absolute fall.

What were not my sensations when I felt this hand necessarily pressing mine to restore her balance! What, when I heard her, in the softest voice in the world, utter sweet words of thanks, and when Sir Harry, who had come up, observed how lucky it was that that gentleman was so near, she replied to him, but with a look at me, which searched me "lucky indeed! and how kindly and nicely he saved me."

The look and the words together put all my pride to flight, nor could I help wondering that she should with such empha

in

sis call that help kind to her, which any one, the most indifferent, would in the same situation have received.

How did I not afterwards brood upon this! But though totally softened in regard to her, I was as punctilious as ever my resolutions as to her family. These, hearing she had had an actual fall (report never loses in its progress), had now approached, and were eagerly asking if she was hurt.

"If I am not," replied she, "it is entirely owing to Mr. De Clifford, who was fortunately so near, and so cleverly saved me."

Mr. Hastings gave me a bow, which, in truth, was one of hearty kindness, for much he loved his child, and Foljambe a look which I thought cold; and I was by no means flattered when young Mansell said, he wondered Sir Harry had not been more alert than to leave her for assistance to a stranger.

The indignation which this word created sank deep into my mind. It was ungracious, unkind, and even ungrateful, small as the service had been; at any rate it was insulting, and I vowed vengeance. My vengeance, however, was only to resolve to leave the room and go home.

The room I left; but before I went home, unable to think of sleep, I wandered by the side of the Ouse, which lay in my way to my inn, and I did this in a frame of mind far from enviable. And yet I had received some little comfort even in the moment of quitting the assembly; for I passed Bertha as I retired, who exclaimed, in a tone which I thought (perhaps it was only thought) said more than the words expressed, "What, going! and so soon?"

The nightingales which I have since heard in the moonlight south, in the same sort of wandering, never were to me half so musical as those few and simple words

CHAPTER XVII.

THE RESTLESSNESS OF A LOVER.

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,

Too rude, too boist'rous, and it pricks like thorns.

SHAKSPEARE.-Romeo & Juliet.

"How sweet is the description of youth, which calls it "the April of our Years!" What delightful promises is not this month supposed by the poets to hold out?

"A day in April never comes so sweet,
To tell us lovely summer is at hand."

"Youth, the April of man's life.”

"Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of his prime."

So says Shakspeare.

"Brisk as the April buds in primrose season."

So says Milton; and so, or to the same tune, a variety of others.

Now, for the life of me, I never could discover, from my own experience at least, a reason for the similarity between April and youth, except that in both there are a great many fools, and a great many tears; that in both is to be found a perpetual succession of hopes disappointed, expectations thwarted, the cup of Tantalus, or the friar's lanthorn of Puck.

Thus it was with me; for in this supposed genial period, my life had received its first shock, by the total darkness that followed so suddenly the little gleam of hope which shone for a moment over my renewed intercourse with Hastings.

I slept not the whole night of the ball, or if I dozed for a moment, the nymph-like step of Bertha responding to that of Sir

Harry, or the cold, changed eye of Charles, like Macbeth, "murdered sleep." I had read in Thompson of

"The charming agonies of love,
Whose misery delights."

Never was anything, I thought, so false. I had agonies, but they were not charming; misery, but it did not delight. Thomson, however, I found correct in other passages on the same subject. For the next day, to divert my thoughts, if possible, I had explored the libraries of York, and had accompanied my father to a public dinner, where persons of my own degree strove to make me converse. But, alas! I found

"Books were but formal dulness, tedious friends;
And sad amid the social band I sat,
Lonely and inattentive."

In point of fact, though these companions of my father were exceedingly honest persons, to look at, hear, or join with them, made me unhappy, because neither their rank, nor manners, nor accomplishments, could bear a comparison with those who moved in the higher and more elegant circle. which had charmed me, notwithstanding my resentment. Anything now that breathed not of that brilliant atmosphere which seemed to surround Bertha, so far from having charms, was even disgusting.

This was my first taste of the misfortune which attends a decayed gentleman, who, no matter from what cause, wilfully lifts himself above the sphere to which his family has fallen; and I began more than ever too feel the sagacity of Fothergill's advice, and to deplore that I had not obeyed it.

And yet the little progress I had made in the society I so admired, or rather the many steps I had retrograded from it, was too cruelly proved to my feelings at this moment not to make me regret this turn in my lot. It was not that my father's associates had anything uncouth or repulsive about them; that their station was other than respectable; or even that they had not the general advantages of common education. They were not indeed able to make or quote verses like Foljambe; they were all men of business, and cared not for