woe to dwell on the idea of again encouraging the hope of calling Louisa his. He felt something almost amounting to indifference towards her-so deeply did he continue to regret the loss of her whose worth he knew not how sufficiently to estimate till she was no more.

The infant she had left him proved a source of consolation; he delighted to lavish endearments on it, which were repaid by the smiles of the little cherub. The first, indeed, that dimpled its cheeks were bestowed on its enraptured father, who hailed with transports, which a parent only can feel, this first dawn of reason.

Time, the only soother of the afflicted, had begun to alleviate the sorrow of the mourner, when his attention was called off from his own grief to that of a person who, he found, was still dear to him.

Louisa, who had made many attempts to send the letter she had written to the Countess of Delville, at length succeeded.

The person, to whose particular care she was committed, was suddenly seized with aviolent fever; another was therefore appointed to fill her place.

This person, Louisa soon had reason to hope, would not be so scrupulous as her predecessor had been, either from a conviction that her charge was not in reality afflicted with insanity, or from a desire to possess a few valuable trinkets, which Louisa still retained, by the in dulgence of her former guard, and which had been offered her, if she would pro mise to send the letter as directed! She consented to do so, and with a punetu ality which Louisa had feared would not be observed, she contrived to have it put in the post:

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Louisa had remembered the town sidence of the Countess, and therefore directed her letter there. But since the death of Lady Adelina, her Ladyship had lived quite secluded at Delville

Castle. It was therefore, some time be fore the letter reached her; and when it did, the liberation of the writer did not appear to be easily effected, as, from not knowing where the house was situated in which she was confined, no clew could be given to guide her friends to her.

@ T But as she had mentioned Mr. Melford as being the person who had so cruelly treated her, the Countess (who had been very anxious to discover her retreat) immediately enclosed the letter she had received to her son-in-law, { C requesting him to lose no time in dis covering the wretched abode of a person for whom they had been so solicitous, and who was suffering under the tyranny of a man who had no authority to inter fere in the disposal of her in any way. Her Ladyship concluded her letter with directions to have Miss Fitzormond, (if able to take so long a journey) brought to her at Delville Castle, bed

The grief, the astonishment, the hor→ ror, of Walter Stanley, on reading Louisa's letter to the Countess (in which she had pathetically told her story, from the time of her leaving Bath to that of her being conveyed to her present abode), were beyond description. He at one moment execrated the villainy of Melford, and the next, his own infatuation, and that of his family, which he considered as having been the cause of throwing her into his power.

"

"Ah! who can tell," cried he in agony, again looking at the date of the letter, but that since this was written despair has seized her mind; that the noble energy of her soul has not been subdued by prolonged suffering, and those fine intellects destroyed; fallen a prey to the demon who presides over the den of horrors in which she has been so long condemned to remain ?"

Leuisa had not mentioned the share

(Mr. Melford had told her) Lady Belmour had in her confinement. She was unwilling to bring so foul a charge. against any part of a family which she still loved and respected. Walter Stanley was therefore spared an additional pang, which the knowledge of this circumstance would have inflicted..

Fearful of losing a moment, he set out to seek an interview with Mr. Melford, to demand the liberty of Louisa; but that gentleman had been seized some months before with a paralytic affection, which had encreased to such a height as. to have nearly deprived him of the use of his limbs, and the power of articulation. He had been using the waters usually prescribed for this disorder at several places, but without success.

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was now at Bath. Thither he was followed by the anxious lover (for that character he had again assumed), but again he was disappointed; Mr. Melford'