ment to him who boastingly outrages at once the primordial order of his God, the holy institution from whence flow all the charities and all the decencies of human existence, and the sacred dictates of truth, deserves the fate which she provokes, and may without any breach of the royal law of love,' be left to undergo it; but the smooth, the plausible, the friendly Sir Charles Seymour; the observer of all decorum; the gentle cautioner against every impropriety, the generous reporter of the vices of the husband that he may undermine the virtues of the wife, although scarcely less to be detested than the more open violator of the most sacred obligations, is much more dangerous to inexperienced innocence; for suspicion is not the offspring of virtue; it is the hateful produce of depravity, or the painful result of confidence betrayed."

"But is Sir Charles Seymour such a man?" said Isabella, with affright.

"He is," said Lady Rachel. "You fled from the tiger, to take shelter in the serpent's den."

"Oh! how I have been deceived!" said Isabella.

"It could scarcely be otherwise," replied Lady Rachel.

"How blest am I," said Isabella, "to have had so kind and so wise a friend as Lord Burghley. But what could move him to such energetic efforts in my favour ?”

"His inducement to such exertions," returned Lady Rachel, "belongs to a piece of family history, which perhaps you will challenge my delicacy, as you have done once before, for giving you; but the affection and respect that we owe to the most sacred relations in life are not grounded on the impeccability of their objects;

and the weakness from whence we must turn away our eyes may yet be innocently the subject of our knowledge, without furnishing a reason to so frail a creature as is the human animal, why we should not love the kind and good qualities that are in unison with it. In a few words, Lord Burghley should have been your father, if Lady Jane had not preferred the choice of a higher rank than any that Lord Burghley was then likely ever to have raised her to, to the immediate companionship of a most excellent and agreeable man, with a moderate competence.

Lord Burghley was not only rejected, but he had but too much cause for being disappointed; and the disappointment pierced even to the heart's core. But he was not only an ardent lover, he was a constant one; and thus thwarted in the first object of his heart, his affections have

ever since hovered over the offspring of the woman whom he had hoped to have made his wife. On you his best hopes have rested; and it would be a second tearing asunder of his heartstrings, if you were to be lost to him by the indulgence of too fervent feelings, as your mother was, by too calculating a head.

She married the man whom she did not love; and was what the world calls happy. Hence her opinion that love is no necessary ingredient in married happiness. But as your father's passion, having nothing to feed on but the charms of the person, scarcely survived the first year of their marriage, she concludes that no woman ever preserved the heart of her husband for a longer period: an opinion as false as it is pernicious; but it served to soothe a vanity that was mortified by the shortness of the empire of her beauty. Her

passions were calm; she was therefore prudent, and she was content to await patiently until the death of your grandfather should put her in possession of what she valued more than the love or even the admiration of her husband. But your father died before he attained the eminence to which Lady Jane aspired, and a younger brother of your father's has succeeded to the title and the property which were to have given rank and opulence to Lady Jane.

"Your mother's jointure, and the provision for yourself and sisters were below your situation in life; and Lady Jane never having felt a wish, but what she supposed that money might have supplied, we may pardon her, if she believes that in seeking to make her children rich, she does all in her power to make them happy."

"And could my mother have mar