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fore she had quite finished repeating the words which were daggers to my heart. Had he said such words to me; had I heard for the first time the outpourings of his affection, could I have slept calmly, knowing that he lay under the same roof and that his thoughts were fixed on me? Happily, Roger has been too honourable to betray my unhappy secret even to Hester, and she will never know that she has been preferred to me; he will conceal it if only to save her pain."

As Honoria spoke, she lifted up a crumpled letter that lay on the carpet at her feet, and began to read it.

"He hopes I shall soon learn to love him as a brother. He will ever feel that I am his Hester's dear and only sister, and his own in being hers; also his most valued and dearest friend next to her. Folly folly folly! as if that were possible. I abhor the very name of friendship. Hate and love are words whose meaning is unmistakeable, but friendship is a word that means anything or nothing."

After blaming Honoria as much as you will, you must make some allowances for her.

The unfortunate girl, although gifted with rare beauty and strong sense, had indeed been unlucky both in her disposition and the circumstances under which it had been developed. The evil that was latent in her nature might in early years have been rooted out by judicious culture of her better qualities. Instead of which it had been fostered, alike by her mother's blind affection and her father's severity-pampered into selfishness and then punished for the faults that sprang with the rapid growth of weeds in a rich soil left neglected and fallow. She tried to do right. She had from the time of her mother's death resolutely conquered the pain of seeing Hester better loved by her father, but those who fancied her of a calm nature had not the slightest insight into her real character. It was her inflexible determination and strength of will which enabled her to preserve an unruffled composure when most girls of her age would have shown their spleen in pettish anger or transient spite.

Such ebulitions are more natural to the young than the restraint Honoria exercised over herself, which was only surfacedeep, and it was the concentrated and repressed passion of years which had now, like a flood overleaping the barriers which had hitherto restrained it, overturned the good resolutions she had kept so firmly from childhood.

Hester had been all the more alarmed by the violence of Honoria's manner towards her in the hayfield, because i was the first time she had known her sister to behave unkindly to her.

When they retired for the night, Hester remembered that in

the absorbing pleasure she had felt in hearing Roger's declaration of love, she had entirely forgotten the trouble occasioned in her breast by her sister's words. Since Roger had avowed his passion. for her she felt more sure than ever that it was on account of Ralph she had provoked her sister's reproaches, and she thought Honoria's fears would be entirely set at rest when she knew Roger's troth was plighted to her. Departing a little from the truth in her over anxiety to set things straight, Hester said that for months and months, her love for Roger and Roger's love for her had been beyond the love of cousins.

Unconsciously piercing her sister's heart by every word she spoke, she prattled for hours after they were in bed about Roger this and Roger that; and then Honoria, after a brief silence, asking her a question, received no answer; and, rising on her elbow to look at her, found, as she had suspected, that Hester, quite tired and exhausted by the tumultuous happiness that had agitated her since sun-down, was now lying with sealed eyelids and parted lips, breathing as softly and regularly as a little child who had fallen asleep with a new top in its hand.

Honoria sprang out of bed unable to endure the torture of contrasting the hurricane in her own heart with her sister's repose. Then she knelt down to repeat the prayer we call the Lord's. Surely, only a divine and perfect being could have conceived the divine and perfect words so many erring creatures have repeated, heedless of their full meaning. When she would have prayed to be forgiven even as she forgave, her throat grew dry, and she started to her feet. Then poured from her fully and freely the pent-up passion-all the love, all the hate, all the jealousy, stored through her youth. Then like a torrent swept her fury, and tore the barriers to pieces that had cost her so much labour and self-sacrifice in their erection.

This is but the attempt to pourtray a once-living woman, not to delineate the heroine of one of the sensational tales so much in Vogue. The reader need not fear that Hester's fair bosom will be pierced by a stiletto, or that poison will be dropped into her cup. As the sunshine streamed in upon Honoria, she had taken a resolution-it had nothing deadly in its character; gently closing the curtains she drew back from the window, and laid herself quietly in bed.

Honoria's resolve was by no means creditable to her, but neither did it contain the elements of tragedy, according to the popular acceptation of that word. She simply contemplated her own marriage.

A former suitor of hers was expected at Hearts on the following day, and in order to escape as soon as possible from a home that

had become hateful to her, Honoria determined to encourage Captain Compton to renew the proposals she had previously rejected.

Captain Compton was a young officer who had been thought quite a hero by the good people of Danesbury, when he came from America, the preceding autumn.

The distress occasioned by the loss of Newfoundland, in Dartmouth, Weymouth, Pool, and all the western ports-the sufferings of thirty thousand people, who had depended on the fisheries for support-had made the bearer of the French colours once hoisted on the Fort of St. John's, and of Colonel William Amherst's despatch to the Earl of Egremont announcing its surrender, more welcome than can at this distance of time be imagined.

It was known, too, that Captain Compton had been serving in Bragg's Regiment, when General Wolfe fell at its head, on the heights above Quebec, and that he had been present during the whole of the campaign, so ably planned by Major-General Amherst during the following summer. Present when the posts of Fort Levi, Isle au Noix, Isle Royale, and finally Montreal, were taken by that brave commander, and thus Canada became a British province.

RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN
MAGISTRATE.

MINOR OR NO MINOR, OR, THE MOVE FOR A HUSBAND. SONDA MOVI DABEA, commonly called Bhoui, was a young Hindu widow of the Pirálee caste, who had been married at the early age of nine, and had lost her husband a few months after. The marriage was never consummated, and she had never lived in her husband's family, or under the protection of any of his kinsmen. She had always lived with her widowed mother and her brothers, named Hurro and Kinno, in their house at Chinsurah, where every endeavour was made to keep her happy.

"I live with tears in my eyes. Of what use is life to me? What do I live for? All around me are joyful and prosperous. My portion alone is misery."

Thus bitterly did Bhoui frequently bemoan her condition. But she always found one at her side who sympathised fully with her griefs, a mother who was never weary of listening to her complaints, never weary in doing all she could to comfort her.

"Oh, Bhoui! Be a good girl, and don't grieve for what cannot be mended. You are young; be hopeful, and life will not be altogether dark to you for all the loss you have suffered. Yes, you will, you can be happy yet, if you will only attend diligently to your books and your religious duties. Your brothers love you, and I love you also-how much I cannot tell; and our love ought to replace the love you have lost."

Bhoui never contradicted her mother, but she felt that there was nothing in her words really to revive her heart. What could books gre to her, or the love of her brothers, or even that of her mother, to make up for the love and devotion of a husband which was denied to her? She was assiduous with her books, and sat up long daily with her instructress, a female convert, to make what she could out of them. But she did not benefit much thereby, for her mind had no inclination in that direction; nor did the female convert know how properly to direct it. The whole object of the latter, in fact, was to induce her to become a convert like herself. She was paid for this task by the Society she served. The plea of instruction was only the "open sesame" which gave her the opportunity to work up to the end which she had orders to attain; and all her labours were confined to reading out passages from the Bible to

Bhoui, and to explain to her all the present and prospective advantages which her conversion would confer on her.

"See, Bhoui, if you become a convert how happy you would be. You have lost a husband, but Christ himself will be as a husband to you!"

"How? Does Christ descend to the earth to make love to the daughters of men as our Krishna did? Krishna had 16,000 mistresses on the earth; how many females has Christ reserved for himself ?" "Oh, that I don't know. All I have heard from the Padree Sahebs is that the virgins who devote their lives to Christ become his brides in heaven."

"In heaven! That must be a very far place to reach, I fancy. How does that remedy our misery on the earth?"

"Why, you can have a husband on the earth also, if you wish. it. You are a handsome girl and can get a Saheb for your husband." "But don't Sahebs stink? They don't anoint their bodies with mustard-oil or turmeric, as we do, and must smell very offensively. No, I should not like to have a stinking husband. I would prefer a native to a European for a bed-fellow."

"Then you can get a native very easily. There are many handsome male converts who would be delighted to have you."

"But there are no converts of the Pirálee caste, I am told. How can I get married beyond the pale of my own caste?

Ah, Bhoui! we Christians have no caste; we hold all mankind to be of one caste."

"Yes, I have heard mother say so, that the Mlech'bas are casteless, and, therefore, not to be touched, for their touch is pollution. I would lose my caste if I became a Christian, and no one would touch me."

"But why should you fear that? As a Pirálee you are casteless already. Do not all good Hindus regard the Pirálees as half-castes, a hybrid race that is neither Brahman nor Sudra? They detest you as casteless; but amongst us there are no prejudices of that kind at all."

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'Well, surely, it is very tempting, and I am so absurdly foolish that at times I have really a mind to go off with you. But then that would mortally offend my mother and my brothers."

"Oh, Bhoui! be reasonable. You have no more decision than a child. What do you care if your mother and brothers get angry with you? Once out of this house, I can place you where their power can never reach you; and when you get a nice husband, you yourself will not care either for your mother or your brothers."

The edifying instruction thus imparted by the tutoress had its full effect on the ignorant mind to which it was communicated; the temptations to become a convert were too great for Bhoui to resist;

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