feelings on behalf of Arthur Grahame. She had described his unfortunate circumstances from her earliest knowledge of them, and had dwelt with peculiar pathos upon his present position, lying ill and helpless, with stunned senses and fractured bones, in a mean lodging, with no one to attend upon him who cared whether he recovered or not. Mrs. More had listened attentively, as she always did to a narrative of disaster, or calamity of any kind; but beyond the stunned senses, and the broken bones, she saw nothing in the story to excite her interest particularly, or her daughter's either. She thought it a pity the young man had no friends of his own to care for him, and expressed a fear that he had led a loose kind of life, to come in the way of such an accident. She had no objection, she said, to take him any little thing that he might want, such as broths or jellies, if Ella wished it. She was fond of attending upon the sick, and, beyond that, thought such opportunities might often be made profitable to the young and thoughtless.

Ella pictured her mother attempting to make her visits to Arthur Grahame profitable in the way proposed, and if she did not absolutely smile, it was because her vexation and annoyance were greater than her tendency to be amused. One thing became very clear-she must keep her mother from meddling in this quarter. She must keep her, if possible, from talking, for Mrs. More had a trick of saying to any one who called, "Who is this Mr. Grahame, of whom my daughter takes so much care?"

Nothing could well be more unwelcome, or inappropriate, according to Ella's feelings, than to hear this question put, and she was compelled at last to request that her mother would desist from even mentioning the name of that unfortunate individual.

"I thought," said Mrs. More, "from the first, he was not a very respectable person; and they do tell me—”

"What do they tell you?" Ella asked, hastily.

"Why, I have heard," said her mother, "it was in consequence of a very disreputable frolic that his accident occurred. In short, that he was coming from a country fair, and was

"Hush!" said Ella. "They say a great deal that is scandalous and false in this place. I must beg that you will not listen to such stories, nor encourage any one to tell them."

"What! not when they are true?"

"I don't think you very likely to know when they are true." "Indeed! Then I must beg of you, Ella, to take a little more care of your character. It is high time, indeed, for me to be looking after your affairs. Why, you want a mother with you now as much as if you were still a child."

It would not be very easy to describe how painful and annoying were these and similar common-place remarks, to one who had so long been humouring her inclinations by all sorts of plausible excuses for doing what she most wished to do. There were good sound principles of practical wisdom in much that Mrs. More said on the subject, but Ella was not disposed to profit by them. So far were her tendencies in an opposite direction, that she now began, almost for the first time in her life, to resort systematically to artifice and deception. Her motives, she still told herself, were good-so good and so hopeful, that her friends would soon see the result of a line of conduct which they might blame her for at the time, but would heartily commend when the results should become evident. She was, she believed, making great progress with Arthur Grahame, in bringing him to sounder and better views of life, both temporal and eternal. She was visiting him privately, supplying him with a thousand comforts which he could not otherwise have enjoyed; and she was doing this under a strong persuasion that she should herself be the means of reclaiming and ultimately saving him.

Nothing could be more encouraging to these hopes than his conversation on a sick bed. Always governed by impulse, always quick to receive impressions, it was the most likely thing in the world that he should, under present circumstances, be not only disgusted with his past conduct, but easily won over to think that he would begin life afresh upon a different plan. Under such auspices as Ella's presence afforded, this was no

unpleasing view. With her bright smile to cheer him on his way, the path of reformation looked inviting enough, particularly now when health and strength were wanting to enable him to pursue any other.

In connexion with the visits which Ella paid to Arthur Grahame, many little mortifying circumstances occurred, however, which might have warned her back; such as arose out of the artifice employed to conceal what she was doing. Many questions were asked of her about this time to which she could not well reply without some violation of the truth; and many fears assailed her, lest by her own inadvertency, or by the treachery of the people of the house where Arthur Grahame was located, little truths should come to light which it would be necessary to deny, or else to reveal the whole.

It is easy to call this conduct of Ella's infatuation. It is easy to call much that we meet with, and hear of in the world, by the same name. And when isolated facts of this nature appear before us in their naked reality, they do, indeed, look like infatuation, or worse; but such facts almost universally arise out of a tissue of entanglements-the gradual growth of years, -the result of ignorance of self, and of human nature in general.

But if Ella was deceived in this instance, as in so many others, it was still more easy, and still more natural for Arthur Grahame, under his present circumstances, to become also the subject of equal, if not still greater, self-deception. In the first instance he had been vexed with himself for the petulant and childish temper which had driven him to the lowest means of revenge; disgracing his own character, without any adequate motive, or any probable repayment in the consequences likely to follow. He had sustained severe bodily injury, too, at a time when he ought, if ever, to be on the alert, and attending to the most important affairs in which he had ever been engaged; and thus had wantonly thrown himself on a sick bed, instead of gathering together all his powers for the impending crisis on which his hopes had for so long a time been centred. But for