promised no less:- but the moulding hands which should have fixed the lines of this perfect form, were withdrawn at the very moment, when all its elements were struggling each for mastery; and that which might have been the fairest work of creation, became but the discordant, though splendid fragments of a wreck!

Mr. Willoughby's parents had died, almost simultaneously at the very period when their continuance in life seemed to be the most necessary for his well being. The restraints of guardianship were felt just long enough to be galling, but for too short a time to be useful, and Mr. Willoughby, at one and twenty, had not only a pleasure but a pride in shewing that he was his

own master.

In using this liberty he soon lost the purity, the simplicity, the originality of character, which an education de

void of all trick, of all falseness of motive, of all affectation, had seemed so firmly to have impressed. He shone, perhaps, with brighter lustre than those around him, but the fire of each was kindled alike from the same censer, and it was not holy fire!

But, amidst all that Mr. Willoughby lost, he did not lose his sincerity, his affections, - his gratitude. The kindness, the love, and the patience of Lady Rachel, from his earliest years, and through many of the first of his aberrations, were engraven on his heart. Much that had been done he wished undone; there, were mischiefs that were irreparable, but his contrition and his candour led him never to dissemble the sense that he retained of his errors; and he could sooner have forgotten every pleasure and every duty of his life, than have failed

in the attention and respect that he owed to Lady Rachel.

He never now approached her without pain and fear, but he did not therefore cease to visit her. His first request to Isabella, after she became his wife, was, that she would accompany him to Lady Rachel.

Of Lady Rachel Isabella had heard, and could she have shrunk from complying with any wish expressed by the object of her then newly conceived passion, she would have excused herself from this visit; but where was it that she would not go with Willoughby? nor had she ever any reason to repent her compliance.

Lady Rachel, it is true, appeared to Isabella as a creature of another world, a something that she had never seen before, but her eccentricity was as pleasing as it was novel; the "Cross Old Woman," whom she had expected

to see, appeared under the form of a commanding personage, with all the beauty that could escape the ravages of sixty years, and with an eye that told of a spirit within that no evolution of time could ever annihilate : graceful and dignified in her manner; plain, but energetic in her language, her words were but the dictates of her understanding, or the effusions of her heart.

There was, however, a steadiness in the look of observation with which she regarded those who were introduced to her, that appalled the timid, and confused the bashful. Isabella felt it through every nerve, while Lady Rachel stood silently gazing upon her for more than a minute; and when turning to her nephew, she at length said "You have done well! See that you are worthy of the happiness that is in your power. Let not the world mar

this precious jewel: if you do, a double guilt will be yours." Isabella felt as if the warning and denunciation came from heaven itself.

With a softer air, and tenderer accent, she then addressed Isabella:

"For you, my child, you must come to me very often. I no longer go into the world; I make the world come to me: and my doors will always be open to you, while I can see you without a heart-ache."

Isabella did not understand these last words; she wondered why any heart should ache for her when her own spoke of nothing but happiness.

"What can Lady Rachel mean," said she to Mr. Willoughby, when they were alone together, "by the fear of my ever giving her the heart-ache ?"

"She means," said Mr. Willoughby, laughing, and caressing her, "that you may be a naughty child; that the