difference. In vain did she attempt to argue herself out of the pleasure she involuntarily derived from those words. "Ought I on any account to be rejoiced at such a discovery?" thought she; "my lot in life, if not quite of my own choice, is one for which I alone am responsible. If, too late, I feel impatient at the bondage into which I have sold myself; is it any consolation to know, that, but for my own act, all might now have been after my heart's first wish? If, in spite of myself, I sometimes give vent to fruitless repinings, ought I not to regret the knowledge that they are shared by one deserving a better fate?"

She endeavoured to persuade herself, that this reasoning of her calmer judgment had chastened her feelings on the subject, and she turned towards Sir James, and tried, by redoubling her usual efforts, to conciliate and please, to induce him to think favourably of the coterie they had left.

But this was no easy task. Sir James was not at all disposed to be pleased with any of the party. The fact was, that he always felt most at home in any society where merit was estimated rather by length of purse than by length of head.

Now, none of those they had that day met were worshippers of golden idols. Mr. Tynte was much too high-flown to think of any thing so matter of fact as pounds, shillings, and pence ;-to be sure, if a valuable collection of pictures had come to the hammer, he might then have envied Sir James his almost

unlimited power of exchanging written paper for painted canvass; but as it was, he contented himself with pitying him as a Goth, without a particle of

taste.

Colonel Canteen felt a respect only for that part of annual income which went in weekly expenditure, and would have valued a man rather upon his butcher's and baker's, than upon his banker's book.

Sir James had, indeed, made two or three attempts to show himself off to his two hostesses, by leading the conversation to subjects of vulgar ostentation; but these endeavours had caused much suppressed amusement to Emily, the effect of which, Matilda had once detected; and though mortified, she could not but own to herself, so just was the ridicule, that, under other circumstances, she would herself have joined in the merriment.

One of the great characteristics of society abroad is its freedom from the overwhelming influence of wealth. In that erratic English community, which, like the gypsy tribe, is governed in all its wanderings by rules and regulations of its own, mixing as little as possible with the natives of the soil, the supreme authority is oftener a matter of contest. It is generally, perhaps, vested in an aristocracy, in the best sense of the word; but from nothing is it so perfectly free as from the dominion of a phetocracy. A mere man of wealth descends from his strong hold, when, leaving behind him "all appliances and means

to boot," he puts himself on a level with the economical traveller.

This Sir James began to feel, and was therefore already dissatisfied with Genevese society; and he gladly availed himself of an opportunity, which offered the next day-of being absent for a short time, on an excursion to Chamouni, an expedition, however, which he did not consider as at all suitable for Matilda to join in.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE morning on which Sir James left Geneva for Chamouni, was the most brilliant the summer had yet produced. Sunshine at Geneva, like a smile upon the face of a famous frowning beauty, is doubly prized, both for its rarity, and the magnificence of the charms which it illuminates, and to the perfect enjoyment of which it alone is usually wanting.

The fineness of the day had persuaded Lady Ormsby and Emily to accompany Count Santelmo on the Lake immediately after breakfast. It was not yet mid-day when an English travelling carriage, that seemed "stained with the variation of each soil," marking that its inmate had not lingered by the way,

turned out of the main road down the lane which led to the campagne on the lake; and after a handsome head in travelling cap had several times been thrust through the window, as if making inquiries, the postillions finally stopped at the gate of Lady Ormsby's villa. The traveller jumped out, and was at the inner door before he was met by old Wilson, the house steward, who, after giving him a lengthened stare, exclaimed, "My Lord! well, to be sure-to think of your coming upon us all like a little impromptu, as I may say!" for in his residence abroad, Wilson too had acquired a little foreign garnish for his tongue. Then altering his tone he added, “But nothing's happened amiss, I hope?"

"No, nothing at all, Wilson," said Lord Ormsby, only that I got away sooner than I expected-that's all. But where's my mother?"

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Why, her Ladyship is just stepped out for a little promenade, I believe, but if you will wait in here, I will fetch her myself." To this Lord Ormsby consented, as he did not wish to have the family meeting under the restraint of a public walk-which was what he perhaps understood by Wilson's "promenade." He was left therefore to himself in the sitting-room, which opened into the conservatory.

"What a happy life," thought he, as he first admired the room itself, and then the thousand little comforts with which its present mistress had adorned it. "Never idle, either of them, I'm sure," he

continued, as his eye wandered among various symptoms of elegant occupation, and at last rested on the instrument-on the desk of which he was somewhat startled at recognizing, in a well-known hand writnig, "Matilda Delaval," marked on the first leaf of his favourite ،، Ombra adorata."

Full well he recollected the night at Ormsby Castle when she had thus marked that paper, and which had at the time drawn from him a remark upon her thinking it necessary thus to appropriate that which she had every way identified with herself. "Could she then be thus near to him? Was it possible that on the very spot where he was then standing, she had been lately delighting his own family, with those tones to which he had never listened without rapture?—No, he persuaded himself that these were all vain illusions, the offspring of a heated imagination; and that a much more natural explanation was, that, like those little relics he had found at Ormsby, the music had formerly been left there, and that his sister had now been practising it."

He had nearly convinced himself that this must be the case, when he accidentally took up from another table a sketch book, with a pencil, whose touch he well knew, left between the leaves, at a half-finished view from the very windows of the apartment where he was seated. There could be no mistake here. "Her pencil was always left in the book." This was apparently so trifling a circumstance, that none