the weight of guilt and misery that lies upon my heart! If I were to tell you what has befallen me in times, now, thank God! long gone by, you would shun me. I should lose the only friend I have on earth, my poor mother excepted; and that would, indeed, be more than I could bear!"

Alice was deeply affected at the earnestness of his manner, and at the deep despondency with which he spoke.

"If, indeed, Mr. Shenstone," said she, "you consider me in the light of a friend, and I am happy that you do so, why not give me the privilege, as well as the title, of friend; why not let me be that friend to share the burthen which I have long seen oppresses you so sorely?"

"Miss Graham," answered George, " your kindness overwhelms me; and yet I dare not profit by your offer. I repeat it! the knowledge of what I am would lose me the only enjoyment I possess your friendship and good opinion; and, oh God! that would indeed be more than I could endure. Miss Graham, I have fervently loved you; you must have seen it, though the folly, the madness, of such a one as I am, daring to— to-even to wish to excite a reciprocal feeling in your breast was ever present to my mind; yet in my presumption I have loved you-do love you still with ardent love! Nay, interrupt me not, I will not insult you by proffering a suit I know you must reject with scorn. I never should have named it to you, but I am hardly

VOL. II.

master of myself now. I thought I had sufficiently schooled my mind to enable me to avoid all this. Forgive me, Miss Graham, if I have distressed you."

He stopped abruptly; and Alice was for a moment at a loss for a reply. At length, without alluding to the declaration he had just made her, she said,

"Mr. Shenstone, I am indeed distressed to see you thus; and the more so, that though you so greatly need it, you refuse that comfort and consolation which is to be found in pouring out our sorrows into the bosom of another. You say," continued she, "that you would lose my friendship and good opinion were you to do so. Is an opinion founded on evident worth and excellence so easily forfeited? Forfeited by the disclosure perhaps of some youthful follies long since repented of and abandoned. Can I cease to respect you, when I see you fulfilling the duties of a son and of a master with scrupulous exactitude, making yourself beloved by all with whom you come in contact ; when I have the certainty that you employ your time and thoughts in promoting the happiness of those around you, no matter at what expense of personal comfort or convenience? Are all these evidences of tangible excellencies to vanish at a tale of events long gone by; and when, as I understand, you were a very different person from what you now are known to be? Would this be just? would this be reasonable?"

. George was still silent, but seemed to listen to her

words with avidity; and, by the increasing brightness of his eye, to derive some little comfort from them.

"And do you really think this?" said he, at length. "Is it possible that a knowledge of what I have to tell would not make you shun me? And yet, your pure mind cannot form an idea of the wickedness I have been guilty of! Miss Graham, delude me not into the disclosure of my secret, and then cast me off for ever! I have deeply, grievously repented in dust and ashes; and if their were any expiation here below, any atonement valid which we could make, my sufferings might have constituted that atonement, for I have not known a moment's peace since I came to a knowledge of that black mass of enormity— myself!"

"However great your crimes may have been, it is not for me, Mr. Shenstone, to judge them. I can only pity you for what you may have gone through; and admire what I see you now perform. And if, indeed, you think that the imparting your secret will be a comfort to you, let not any apprehension of harshness, or unkindness on my part, deter you. You have suffered so much already, that I should be a brute, indeed to heap any additional misery on you at the disclosure I may myself have induced you to make— solely and entirely, believe me, in the hope that such a disclosure may promote your comfort,-not with the intention more deeply to probe your wounds," George was greatly moved.

"Yes," he said, at length, "to pour out my sorrows into your bosom, to unburthen myself to you, will indeed be a comfort. You alone shall know my history. Oh, there is a happiness even in the thought, that I shall have nothing hidden from you, that you have allowed me to treat you with a confidence I have never extended to another. But I cannot tell

you now; I will write. I could not tell you all you ought to know. The going over those scenes again would be too painful to me! I will write. God bless you, Miss Graham. Thanks, thanks, for your kindness. It will never be forgotten!"

And taking her hand for a moment in his, he let it drop; then turning his horse, he rode off in the homeward direction, the Quarter Sessions, and his business in the country town, at which they were on the point of arrival, having quite slipped his memory.

CHAPTER VI.

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end.

HAMLET.

THE singular conversation just related, and the probable result of it, afforded Alice ample matter for

reflection on her road homeward. It was a relief that George had left her, and that she found herself at liberty to think over all that had passed between them. How singular was their footing together! The young man had been betrayed, it might almost be said, into a declaration of love, but under such circumstances as to make a reply from herself unnecessary. Of this same young man she was now, nevertheless, the confidante and only friend. She was surprised at herself for feeling no embarrassment in her intercourse with him, knowing, as she did, the state of his feelings towards her; and even now, when he had explained himself in plain terms, the whole transaction seemed so much a matter of course, and a consequence of what she already knew to be the case, that it left scarcely any impression upon her mind. Not so the conversation which had given rise to this declaration, nor the result which was likely to ensue. Her curiosity (a failing sometimes unjustly attributed exclusively to our sex) was, it must be confessed, most forcibly awakened. What could he have done in America, which should excite such deep remorse, such lasting melancholy? She ran over a catalogue of crimes in her mind, but all were rejected as impossible to have been perpetrated by so admirable a person as George Shenstone. In short, she was lost in a sea of conjecture, with occasionally a degree of dread of what she had yet to learn. In this state of suspense, two days elapsed, which she conceived