Her daughter, Salina, christened Sarah, comes with her often to the Abbey, from whence she returns always more intolerable than before.'

Mr. Vernon now approached, and having been introduced to the two gentlemen, requested they might return to the Parsonage, and take some refreshment.

This

they declined on the plea of an appointment not to be dispensed with, and taking a polite leave, passed through a gate, and were quickly out of sight.

Mr. Vernon alighted, and took from his pocket two letters marked Bristol,' one directed to Mrs. Vernon, and the other for Maria. He expressed much anxiety to know the accounts they brought, and described his inability to sleep during the night from apprehension of what their contents might be, having received them the day before in passing through the post

town.

Maria chid him for not opening hers on an occasion so agitating. He declared that having established in his family a regulation, prohibiting any one person from breaking the seal of a letter addressed to another, he would not be the first to violate his own law.

The epistle from Caroline to her sister had evidently been written whilst under a particular dejection of spirits. It mentioned the return of a cough which had for a time ceased, but lately become most troublesome to Henry; also an increase of fever, which the physicians hoped might be the result of very variable weather, and a cold taken from having opened his windows whilst an easterly wind prevailed. A few lines from Henry to his mother were not more inspiriting: at the conclusion he expressed the most ardent desire to be again at home, and fervent hopes that Christmas Day might find him once more

t

at the parsonage fire-side. A postscript from their attendant, Mrs. Carr, contained

a request that they would punctually answer the Bristol letters, as any intelligence of his family appeared to afford the greatest possible pleasure to the invalid.'

Maria, seated at her writing desk, was about to commence an answer to Caroline's letter, when startled by a well-known knock, and the next moment Captain Maxwell stood behind her. He betrayed evident embarrassment, but Maria and Harriet, faithful to their arrangement, received him with as much appearance of their usual cordiality as they could possibly.

assume.

A little re-assured, he presented to the former a new publication, but just received from his bookseller, and declared himself unable to give an opinion as to the merits of the work, not having yet read it; he however trusted, The Lament of Tasso '

might afford some entertainment to Miss Vernon, being from the pen of her favorite author.

Again involved in a maze of doubt and perplexity, Maria took the book from this inexplicable character, and beguiled by the speciousness of his manner, instantly decided the poem to be a peace-offering; the visit for the purpose of explaining the apparent incomprehensibleness of the last night's conduct.

Some time having elapsed without the desired elucidation, she twice essayed to introduce it by commending the taste displayed in the decorations of the Abbey; but he studiously evaded the subject, and most dexterously changed the conversation:

A singleness of heart, and total absence of suspicion, being leading features in Maria's disposition, the moment Maxwell departed she hastened to seek her mother,

whom she found in tears, with the letter of Henry in her hand: yet this amiable woman, unwilling by her own despondency to throw a gloom over those around, listened to the amount of Maria's renewed hopes with a tender smile, and entreating her not to hazard, by being too sanguine, a second disappointment, bathed her eyes, and took her accustomed seat with her family at the dinner table.

Whilst undressing for the night, Maria remarked to her sister, that the Abbey ball being the only occasion afforded to Captain Maxwell for evincing his sense of the attentions received at Ovoca Lodge, he might perhaps have thought it right to avail himself of that opportunity, and that his undivided assiduities to Miss Gardner were merely the effusions of a grateful mind.'

Harriet observed that it was quite impossible he could have experienced half