world may spoil you; and she has no charity for those whom the world spoils."

"But it has not spoilt you," said Isabella fondly. Mr. Willoughby coloured, and said, "The truth is, my dear Isabella, that Lady Rachel does not think as others do; but I suspect that she is right, and others wrong."

It was some time before Isabella's farther knowledge of Lady Rachel confirmed this opinion of Mr. Willoughby's. Lady Rachel held the maxims by which Isabella had been taught to regulate her conduct in such sovereign contempt, that Isabella was sometimes angry; and she treated as the merest trifles so much of what Isabella had been made to consider as the weighty matters of the law, that Isabella began to doubt her wisdom. But she found such a charm in the spirit and originality of her con

versation as nothing could countervail; and she solved all that appeared to her as strange, or imbecile, by teaching herself to believe, that " poor Lady Rachel" had lived so long out of the world that she did not know what was necessary to live in it.

A still farther progress in their intimacy produced another alteration in her opinion. She began to suspect that it was not "poor Lady Rachel" that did not know the world, but "" poor Isabella," who had never been taught to distinguish truth from falsehood, Bristol stones from diamonds.

Still, whether pitying Lady Rachel or mistrusting herself, Lady Rachel maintained her influence over the mind of Isabella. As long as she was at ease with Mr. Willoughby, and at peace with herself, she yielded to this influence; and there was scarcely a day that she did not pass a part of it in

the drawing-room of Lady Rachel Roper. But no sooner did she begin to grow unhappy, and to seek, in following the pernicious counsels of Mrs. Nesbitt, a remedy for her unhappiness, than a consciousness that Lady Rachel would not approve the regimen that she had adopted, made her abate in her visits to her. She was not always aware to what degree this abatement extended, until reminded of her negligence by some sarcastic remark of Lady Rachel, or by a coldness and reserve in her deportment, which Isabella could even less endure than her more open severity. Isabella would then make her peace by an increased assiduity, and although she sometimes sickened as she ascended Lady Rachel's stairs, it was but rarely that the sun-shine which she met within her apartments did not restore her to ease

and comfort the moment that she was

seated.

It was in one of these intervals, in her attendance upon Lady Rachel, that Isabella had discovered the weakness of her own self-government; and, alarmed by the helpless situation in which she found herself, she cast all her hope upon Lady Rachel. The first moment of their interview she believed would be terrific, but the result she knew would be peace; and like one who, having dabbled with quacks, from a fear of the regular course of the knife, or the caustic, awakes at length to the sense of the danger incurred, and braves all sufferings so that life may be preserved, Isabella resolved to throw. herself into the hands of Lady Rachel, and to do and to suffer all that she might prescribe.

The doors of Lady Rachel were al

ways open to Isabella; and there were not any after Lady Rachel had quitted her dressing-room that Isabella had reason to believe would prevent her being received. Early rising was, in the estimation of Lady Rachel, one of the virtues; and Isabella calculated that her reception might be the gentler, the earlier she presented herself.

The clocks in the city and liberties of Westminster had not done sounding eleven, when Isabella broke in upon the morning studies of Lady Rachel. The book was immediately closed, and the hand was held out to welcome her, but the brow was cold and rigid.

"Do you come to offer me the dregs of your last night's orgies?" said Lady Rachel; " or have the reflections they occasioned chased away the power of sleep from your eyes?"

"My dear Lady Rachel," said Isa