nification, in the days of wifehood, for the restraint of those of the nursery and the school-room. She was to be happy by something external, and independant on herself. To be amused, was to be the philosopher's stone, that would transmute all things into gold; to be dull, was to be reduced to nothing.

Having now the means in her power, and stimulated by the desire of showing herself wherever Lady Charlotte was to be seen, Isabella, " nothing loth," threw herself into the vortex of dissipation; and, from having been retiring and pensive, under a sense of her husband's indifference, became, from the overpowering desire to gain his affections, the gayest of the gay, and the most prominent figure in pleasure's festive train.

Mrs. Nesbitt, continually at her elbow, failed not to urge her forward in

the unholy career into which she had entered. The spur was always the same: there was some superiority to be gained over Lady Charlotte; or there was some flagrant attempt to seduce Mr. Willoughby from his rightful allegiance to be punished. It was a perpetual struggle; a continual hostility; and Isabella's gentler soul would have withdrawn from the contest, had not Mrs. Nesbitt been careful to cover some of its thorns, by the constant repetition of the effects that Isabella's growing popularity were working on the mind of Mr. Willoughby. As Isabella was rather told of these effects than aware of them herself, even this motive could not long have induced her to continue the course of life that she was in, but for a bosom enemy: an enemy which Isabella had no suspicion that she harboured in her breast. She had been

so often told that she was not vain, that she did not believe that she could be influenced by aught of all that creates vanity in others. She imagined that if she did not dislike to hear the praises of her charms from the mouth of the flatterers by whom she was surrounded, that it was rather from the proof that such praises afforded that she was worthy the love of Mr. Willoughby, than from any pleasure she took in the adulation itself.

And could the homage of the many have compensated for the neglect of one, Isabella had been undone.

She had stept from the school-room into the world; and she appeared there, not only with all the glowing charms of youth and novelty, but under the attractive form of a wife.

Isabella Hastings might have fixed the distant gaze, or might have allured, perhaps, the cautious step of

some one who "was rich enough to please himself;" she might more frequently than her companions have been invited to have exhibited herself in a quadrille, or have been more frequently led from her box at the opera; but all who feared "to be taken in❞ would have stood aloof; and all who might have been feared, as designing "to take in," would have been distanced by the vigilance of Lady Jane; but the admiring Mrs. Willoughby involved no consequence, established no claim; all might breathe their incense at a shrine where the only offering was a heart.

The panoply of matrimony, once the bulwark of its possessor, is now become the treacherous betrayer of the treasure which it seems to guard; and Isabella, who had often heard debated with anxious hope and fear, the probability whether or not she would be

established, on her "first coming out," had now reason to think that she might have had the whole world to have chosen from.

She moved not without a crowd of adulators, with whom all that she said, or did, or looked, was "fairest, virtuousest, discreetest, best." She heard from every mouth that she had no fault; and she felt it, in the universal delight which she inspired. But not for all this did even her fancy wander from the preference that she gave her husband; and all who approached her were alike indifferent, except as they were distinguished by their manners, or their understanding.

In this light Sir Charles Seymour stood foremost in her favour. The suavity of the one, and the cultivation of the other, made him always an agreeable companion to Isabella. In him also there appeared more of esteem