will never forget setting out at midnight to meet your friend at a cottage, when you was in such ill health; no, nor the little justice at the King's Arms." Paulina assured Mr. Sandford she should always remember him.

The Marquis of Glenvorne had directed his friend to keep Paulina in his eye till he received some intelligence of the proceedings of Lord Avondel. His detestation of her vices, and compas-. sion for the deserted countess, would not permit Mr. Sandford to be content with restraint; nor would he allow the persecuted Paulina to brood alone over the disappointment and surprise of Avondel at her failing in her assignation, or indulge her with leisure to compare her present situation with the picture she had drawn of a voluptuous retirement, and meeting her paramour after he had broken every sacred obligation for her sake.

The noise which this disgraceful seizure must make, and her apprehension that her friend the justice, intoxicated with the honour of serving a great lady, would divulge her name, made her indeed as desirous to keep him with her as he was to stay and enjoy gratifications so suited to his temper, by humbling pride and alarming vice. But as her acuteness made it impossible long to preserve the deception, and as even the enjoyment of a successful project palls in time, as the evening closed in he became as anxious to be released from his mock dignity as Paulina was to escape from her thraldom.

CHAP. XXVIII

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul.

SHAKESPEARE,

THE reader will recollect, that, after a severe struggle, Lord Avondel permitted vice, depravity, and cruelty, disguised under the semblance of honour, to gain the ascendancy. Long indulged habits had rendered Paulina's society necessary to his happiness, and with the common license of offenders.

he pleaded the necessity he had created as an excuse for his crime. Yet still, as he left his own house with the intention of abandoning his wife and child, his step was irresolute, and his heart palpitated with a vehemence that marked his innate abhorrence of the part he was going to perform. His son he determined to reclaim, but he sighed when he reflected that he should see Emily no more. The innocent, affectionate, gentle Emily: so he once thought her. The mean-spirited offspring of Selina's guilt, so (though no proof of the accusation had been produced,) he persuaded himself he should henceforth consider her. Even as he hurried along to meet the woman for whom he had consented to tarnish his brilliant reputation, he meditated more on his blasted prospects as a lover, a husband, and a father, than on the transport of possessing the object

of universal admiration. He mounted the carriage which was to convey him to his guilty associate with dissatisfaction instead of ecstasy, and mused on the possibility of acting as a mediator between her and her husband, and restoring her untainted in person and renovated in fame to the grateful conciliated Monthermer.

Perhaps the practicability of his plan seemed less evident as he approached the supposed sphere of her attractions. He alighted at the garden gate with an air of rapture; inquired if the lady was arrived, and was shewn into a parlour. "My loveliest dearest friend," said he, perceiving a femalę advancing to meet him; but the imperfect light showed it was not Paulina. A form worn to that sort of ethereal transparency, that the soul seemed ready to burst through its mortal mound, a countenance illuminated by