noured, and in a fatal moment confided

in you.

AUGUSTUS STAINFORTH."

"Alas!" cried Waldorf, "his pen wounds me deeper than his sword would have done." But, notwithstanding, he waited on Lavinia, and prosecuted his suit with all a lover's eagerness, though well aware that by marrying her he should inflict a new wound on the unhappy Stainforth.

Stainforth, meanwhile, secluded himself from the eyes of every one; and having at length made all the necessary arrangements for quitting D

entirely,

he set off for a country-seat that he

possessed, at 50 miles' distance from the city, and nearly inaccessible from its rocky and mountainous situation. Here Stainforth resolved to brood over his wrongs and endeavour to obtain means of revenging them; and here he resolved to feed his

hopeless but still ardent passion with a degree of romantic folly which nothing but his youth, and the idea that Lavinia felt for him a mutual passion, could in any degree excuse. And his intended constancy soon became more absurd and more reprehensible, when Lavinia, with a readiness which proved her to have no heart, admitted that Waldorf's treachery to his friend was at once an interesting proof of his ungovernable love for her and of his generous abhorrrence of falsehood, and consented to become almost immediately the wife of the man who had been the means of causing misery even worse than death-the consciousness of disgrace to the quick-feeling and loftyminded youth to whom, but a few days before, she had professed a tender attach

ment.

A woman worthy of the love of Stainforth would not, could not, have acted thus: but such is the force of habit; and

certain received opinions on the subject of love, and particularly first love, over the mind even of the enlightened of both sexes, that Stainforth, though informed from indisputable authority, of the unaffected cheerfulness and pleasure with which Lavinia received Waldorf's addresses and consented to marry him, persisted in declaring that he should adore her to the end of his existence with an attachment as ardent as her conduct was cruel.

At length the news of the actual marriage took place; and for days after, Stainforth confined himself to his room and saw no one; while from the bottom of his soul he rejoiced that he was too far removed from D to witness any of the nuptial splendours, and congratulated himself in having taken refuge in retirement. But what was the retirement to which he had doomed himself? Not the rigid solitude of the hermit or the devotee, but a solitude cheered by the so

ciety of an affectionate and enlightened mother, and of a lovely and accomplished relation.

When the father of Stainforth, a debauched, passionate, self-willed, and extravagant German nobleman, had in a moment of irritation dyed his hands in the blood of his friend, and been forced to fly to England, his flight was too sudden for his wife to be a partaker in it; and when he found himself in England, and possessed of a considerable sum to expend on his own private pleasures, he was not at all disposed to solicit her to follow him. And his refusal to allow her to share his exile was the greatest favour which he ever conferred on her; for she remained at her country-seat to educate her niece, the ward of her exiled husband, then a girl of fourteen, and to enjoy the society of her pious and affectionate son.

Madame Stainforth had never beheld

with approbation her son's attachment to Lavinia Sternheim, because she did not think her possessed of sufficient energy and decision of character, and perhaps because she wished him to marry her charming pupil and niece, Sophia Manstein. Therefore, had Stainforth's disappointment been occasioned by any other cause than one which degraded him, she would have rejoiced at it; but as it was, her maternal pride was deeply wounded; and though she severely blamed her son for having allowed passion to triumph over that regard for truth without which no one can be respectable in society, she thirsted as eagerly as Stainforth did for revenge on Waldorf, and was also desirous that he should hide his disgrace and his self-reproaches in retirement and domestic pursuits.

"And are you indeed willing to quit the pleasures of society for my sake?" said Stainforth.