wood for an explanation. The tale was told him, and at its conclusion, Lionel knelt at his mother's feet, to receive, for the first time, the maternal kiss and blessing.

With mingled emotions, I stood aloof, till called by Lady Ravensden to share the caresses she was bestowing upon her new-found son. How sincerely I rejoiced in their happiness! but how anxiously I hoped that ere long, the dark cloud which shrouded my own parentage would be dispersed. The child of sin,' rang in my ears, that expression which, in an unguarded moment, had fallen from Lionel; if he loathed the thoughts of it in his own person, would he not in like manner shrink from me as from a polluted thing? the thought was pain-pain, piercing to the very bones and marrow.

There was, of course, great excitement at Compton on our return thither in the evening, with the news of the wonderful discovery made in the morning.

The ladies were all more or less hysterical, and tears stood in many manly eyes, while all found a difficulty in giving Mr. Grey, the name of Courtenay.

In the excitement, I had little leisure for dwelling on my own anxiety, and Lionel was so attentive, so tenderly kind, and so devoted that night, that he almost banished the recollection of that sentence which had appeared to sear afresh the brand upon my brow.

Love! happy love! when heart answers to heart, and no cold suspicion like a glaived hand comes between-how it takes the chill off the freezing disappointments and vexations of life! How it nerves us for endurance, and soothes us in our irritation, and comes like a ray from heaven, to brighten our pathway.

Not the romantic fancy of youthful maidens, and beardless boys, of which it has been said, that although the sweetest thing in

life,

""Tis odour fled as soon as shed,

'Tis morning's winged dream,

'Tis a light that ne'er can shine again,
On life's dull stream."*

but the deep, enduring love of man and woman, the strong and even pulsation which beats on with unvarying throb through all changes of

* Moore.

grief or time, and which, when the expiring heart's faint and ever fainter beating, whispers of death, can yet gaze onward into the mystic regions of Eternity.

Such love was ours; saddened and clouded over, but clear and still in its profound depths, earnest and hopeful.

CHAPTER XVI.

"O! 'tis a fearful thing to be no more,
Or if it be, to wander after death!
To walk as spirits do, in brakes of day,
And when the darkness comes, to glide in paths
That lead to graves; and in the silent vault
Where lies your own pale shroud, to hover
Striving to enter your forbidden corpse."

DRYDEN.

I must now leave the happy group at Compton, and transport the reader to another place, to witness a scene which had some influence on the destiny of Isola Brand.

It was a cold, dull evening in Spring; brooding clouds lay in dense dark masses, like a funeral shroud athwart the sky, and through rents here and there in the sable pall, gleamed pale, hard streaks, like eyes,

with a cold, staring gaze; while a low wind swept the ground, making mournful music wherever it went.

Lord D'Arville was sitting in the library at his gloomy castle. This room was at a corner of the building, the end room of a long corridor; and had glass-doors opening upon the terrace which stretched its magnificent length the whole extent of the building.

It was his lordship's favourite apartment, and the one in which he usually sat when alone at D'Arville. In summer time, it was a pleasant room enough, for the tall pines which abounded in the neighbourhood, formed a clustering knot close by, and threw a grateful shade over that corner, while the gay sunbeams that contrived to pierce the heavy branches of the trees, glimmering and trickling through, stole in tempered shades through the stained windows.

But in winter, or the chilly days of Spring and Autumn, there was something peculiarly mournful about it; the shade of the said pines was grave, sombre, and heavy-it oppressed you; and then it was you noticed that cold colours prevailed in the tinting of the glass,