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What! not receive my foolish flower?
Nay, then I am indeed unblest,"

I continued, in a tone of real mortification, as he scarcely deigned to notice the lovely offering; observing bitterly, no, no, Lady Blanche, this is all affectation; you have long, long since lost all taste for aught so natural; to you, the following is far more apt,

"Green fields, and shady groves, and crystal springs,
And larks and nightingales are odious things;

But smoke, and dust, and noise, and crowds delight;
And to be prest to death, transports her quite !"

Oh, a thorn! I suddenly exclaimed, as if in extreme pain, flinging down the rose, with which I had been trifling to conceal my conscious confusion, at the truth of these sarcastic lines. See! how it has hurt me; and I held my hand towards him. You know, sans vanité, I can boast of my hand; I had bitten it furtively, just to give it a pink tinge, to contrast with the pearly whiteness of my arm; do look how red it is! but it made no impression, for, without glancing at the place, or, even dreaming of touching that beautiful hand, he coldly observed, It is nothing, you will soon get over such a trifle; and, wishing me a good evening, he prepared to leave the room, "Fermez la porte doucement," I murmured, languidly flinging myself on the sofa, "for my nerves are sadly shattered, and cannot endure jarring." "I am not surprised at that," he replied, pausing at the door, "you really should get out more into the air; this close apartment is enough to enervate you." there ever such a barbarian? without the slightest regard to my complexion, he would have me expose myself to the variability of this horrid climate, which, in one four and twenty hours, embraces the extremities of the poles, for heat and cold!

Was

I should not care so much for his dereliction, if I had not, in the exultation of fancied success, published my conquest, especially to annoy and wound those who aspired to subjugate him too now I shall be considered by the very creatures I aimed to spite in the pitiful light of une demoiselle délaissée, une demoiselle encore à marier; one of that unfortunate class of beings, I have so frequently sneered at, as the mark for the ow, unmoving finger of scorn; and thought there ought to be an asylum erected by Government, for girls after five and twenty to take refuge in, those barren fig-trees which cumber the ground of May Fair.

I must not lose a moment in defeating the malice of my amiable friends, I must not lose a moment in insinuating as deli

cately as I dare to spare his feelings, that I have rejected him ; he will never be base enough to contradict me.

I cannot describe the pang the idea of really losing him costs me, the latent regret I experience in thinking of it. It can, however, only arise from disappointed vanity; I cannot surely, after all, love him; I cannot so far forget myself, as to be guilty of the foolish sensibility of a vulgar affection;-and yet my heart almost throbs naturally, and yet my eye almost weeps naturally, as I recall the influence I once possessed over him, his various perfections, his manly sentiments, his noble dignity, his firm and truthful conduct, his abhorrence of all that is mean, base or dishonorable, the grace and ease of his very handsome person. Oh, I must indeed remember the insult of being so slighted, so despised, to prevent my regret being too, too bitter. I must return to town, I must plunge into the distracting dissipations of the dear Metropolis, I must make new captives, I must compel him to feel that the charms he rejected are still invincible. What a combat I am preparing, what a battle to fight! I shudder at the idea of defeat, and shudder more at the idea of success !

I have endeavoured to ridicule away my real chagrin, I have endeavoured to cloke under a sportive and artificial badinage my real remorse, my real self-tormenting conviction, that, when he thinks of me calmly, dispassionately, severely, he will congratulate himself on his escape; he will marvel at his blind infatuation, and rejoice at being so timely undeceived; he will feel no compunction for my wounded tenderness, my outraged sensibility, because he imagines I possess neither. But, O Janet, Janet, now, now, that it is too late to avail with him; now, now, that it is too late to convince him; I find, to my sorrow, find, that, despite of the force of habit, the perversion of sentiment, I have still a heart susceptible of true affection, I am still a very woman, a fond, confiding, dependant, devoted woman; one, to be moulded to the will of another, one,—to glory in the humble obedience becoming her sex! none, none save your precious secret self, however, must ever know this; and, in particular, Lord Melfont, for I would rather die, a thousand times die, than forswear my false, delusive, hateful seeming in his eyes, or those of a world, I most throughly abhor, but, which I love to triumph over still.

Write and advise me for the best, Janet; you know the confidence I have in your understanding, the reliance I have in your affection; write, write then, without disguise. Lecture, scold pity, condemn; only do write to your unhappy, but still devoted Blanche,-I will not say Lorraine-I am sick of signing myself by it so long.

April, 1849.-VOL. LIV.--NO. CCXVI.

LL

Oh, how changeable, how vacillating is the mind of woman! I begin to think I have taken alarm too soon; I begin to think that, blinded by an unfounded jealousy, I have imputed intentions to him, which he never harboured; I begin to think that, lending his actions the colour of my own distempered imagination, I tinged them with the dark shades of an indifference, really foreign to them, for, indeed, how often does the change in our own feelings cast a sickly hue over every object within their range, causing us to blame or lament in others that which is only produced from our own fickleness, our own restraint, our own coldness of manner!-In fact, Janet, I begin to hope again. “La tolleranza, il tempo

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Sweet Metastasio, be prophetical. Addio. Addio.

CHAPTER III.

"I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano :
A stage where every man must play a part."

Shakspeare's" Merchant of Venice."

"I was born so high,

Our aiery buildeth in the cedar's top,

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.

Ibid."Richard the Third."

The Honourable Harry Spendwell to Lord Melfont.

White's Club-House.

My dear Melfont.-For the first time in my life, I will be punctual, if only for the sake of novelty, and reply to your letter immediately, as you requested me. Why! you really appear more than ever enamoured of woods, and groves, and purling streams, and, now you have discovered this new sylvan dryad to worship, I despair of reclaiming you. What a splendid highpriest of Mona you would have made! J think I see you, en

grande costume, preparing to offer sacrifices to the sacred "vervain," before you venture to cut a sprig for your bouquet l'amour. I can picture you, climbing the old oak tree, armed with your golden knife, a regular couteau-de-chasse, to demolish the venerated "mistletoe," to wreathe your august brow, and that of la Diva of your adoration. Prenez garde, mon cher, *hat there is no rustic Pollio, lying perdu, to steal the kisses one always associates with that Christmas-gracing, sport-creating

plant.

So! you have positively forsaken la belle Blanche? C'est dommage! she is really a superb creature; her walk is worth an empire; I know no woman who enters a room with a greater, a more overpowering consciousness of the prerogatives of birth and beauty; she has a decided allure, a vivacity, a felicitous assurance quite unrivalled. By heaven! with such a woman leaning on his arm, the meanest poltroon would feel his soul elevated, ennobled, dignified!

Then, her piquant repartee, her esprit, her badinage, her charming coquetry,-and you have actually resigned her for a chit, a mammet, a pretty, glittering, unthawed icicle, a thing all innocence and alarm, one, who never declined even the present tense of the verb aimer in her life; one, who if asked to marry, would reply much in the manner of Juliet,—

"It is an honour that I dream not of:"

or, like a city miss, who has been finished at Boulogne," Il faut que vous vous addressiez à maman, monsieur !"

My dear fellow, how can you seriously contemplate such an undertaking in its crude state, without horror? think of the immense labour of breaking her into anything like the pace of a fashionable woman; think of the wear and tear of cultivating the raw material, to a mind even tant soit peu blasé. If you do persevere in your folie de jeune homme, and make her Lady Melfont before she has had the advantage of a season or two to blow off the smell of new-mown hay now hanging about her, you must positively take her to Paris, to have her put properly on her legs, before trotting her out at St. James's, on a presenta ion day.

So you wonder how I am able to exist in this "Village," imagining, that I must expire of ennui, that I have nothing to do; au contraire, I am as affairé as a newly elected cabinet minister, or a common councilman of the ward of Farringdon without, not having a moment's leisure.

Think what I have to accomplish in one poor four-and-twenty hours,-breakfast, papers, letters, dressing, the clubs, calls, the

park, dinner, opera, Almack's, a few routs, Crockfords, un charmant petit souper with Julietta, and then to bed. Does any slave in our West India Colonies work harder, or, any millocrat's half starved victim? Talk of philanthropy, who deserves it so much as a real man of fashion? then, again, you reflect on my want of taste in preferring the squares of the Metropolis, to your groves of Blarney: I plead guilty to the soft impeachment, confessing myself a veritable disciple of the epicurean school of Captain Charles Morris, to say nothing of the more redoubtable uthority of the great Samuel Johnson, who fixed the locality of his own "Happy Valley" in Bolt Court, Fleet Street. Listen to the Anacreon of Carlton House, and be edified!

"But a house is much more to my taste than a tree,

And for groves, oh! a grove of good chimnies for me.
If one must have a villa in summer to dwell,

Oh! give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall!"

In fact, my dear Melfont, London is the only place for a man whose heart has become completely petrified; an unimpressionable calosity. Heart did I say? yes, I once had one, a warm, sincere, hopeful, loving heart, but it was chilled by the cold hand of pride and disappointment. You, who have only known me as the roué, the spendthrift, the "man about town," the vulture preying upon the young and facile of his own sex, and too often on that of the frailer and fonder of the opposite, will marvel to hear that I once loved,-loved with all the intensity of a first pure unworldly passion; and just such a being as you describe Marguerite to be, save for her noble birth, an angel of innocence and beauty; trustful as a child, but devoted as a woman; but she could boast of nothing else, neither fortune nor ancestry, being only the daughter of my tutor, and my father, who was as proud of his pedigree as an Affghan chief, remorselessly tore us asunder, as soon as he discovered our mutual affection, threatening me in the usual manner with the succession of a shilling, if I did not instantly relinquish the mad and degrading infatuation; nor could entreaties, despair, expostulations, menaces, ever induce him to alter that barbarous resolve, so long as he lived. Thus was my fate sealed, thus I became what I am, for could I entail poverty on one so dear? No! my soul shrank from such selfishness, and we parted, parted for ever.

I will not linger on the agony of that tremendous moment, the tears shed, the blessings breathed, the embraces given and permitted then, then, for the first and last time. I will not pause on the tedious and wretched existence which was mine for years after that separation, how I mourned over,-how I regretted the loss of that love. Oh! such a love is not compressed

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