his friend Mr Ashmole to receive the fugitives at Turret House, a proposition which that gentleman felt himself obliged to decline from the same motives; and hence, the agitation and the eagerness to disclaim all knowledge of the parties, which Jocelyn had remarked, whenever he made inquiries at these respective residences. It seemed as if the wanderers, pursued by the terror that attached to Walton's name, were to find no resting-place for their feet, no hand to welcome, no house to shelter them. But Constantia had no sooner learnt their arrival, than, disdaining all these cowardly and selfish apprehensions, she flew with open arms to her friends, pressed them to her affectionate heart, desired them to share her fate and fortune, and proposed, that to avoid being indebted to any one, they should all three live together, an arrangement which, since the death of her father, would be peculiarly gratifying to herself.

This generous offer being accepted with gratitude, she immediately engaged for their reception the house withinside Temple-Bar, from which she was fortunately absent in company with Mrs Walton, at the moment when Julia had been rescued by Jocelyn, in the manner already described.

Mark Walton had no sooner arrived in London, than he hastened to call upon his relatives, affecting to take the deepest interest in the fate of his uncle, reprobating the treachery by which he had been entrapped, and offering his services towards assisting in the defence, or in whatever other way they could be rendered available. At a moment when they seemed to be shunned and deserted by all the world except Constantia, such

conduct, especially in one who held a situation about the court, bore an appearance of generosity and disinterestedness, which Julia failed not to recognize with the fervour that belonged to her character, and which the object of it was willing to attribute to motives of a tenderer and more personal nature. He had never seen

her since they had played together as children, and was no less astonished at the improvement a few years had effected, than smitten by the charms which he now contemplated in the full perfection of her womanhood. The visits, which had been begun by policy, were now continued from an attachment to his fair cousin, that gathered strength every day; and he looked forward to the possibility of reconciling all parties to their marriage, by making it appear that he was a compulsory witness in the prosecution of his uncle, and by offering to settle upon Julia the family estate which was to be restored to him by the Government. Such an expectation was not less absurd than sordid; but knaves are peculiarly liable to make the most foolish miscalculations, because they judge of others by themselves, and thus lay the foundation of their plans upon a wrong estimate of human nature.

For some time, however, he succeeded in ingratiating himself with Julia. Being allowed to communicate with the prisoner by letter, Walton's family learnt his determination to plead guilty, a resolution which they combated most strenuously, and which his nephew also condemned as pusillanimous self-abandonment. He even accompanied Julia to a celebrated counsellor at Westminster, to solicit him to undertake the defence;

and it was upon this occasion that Jocelyn had seen them arm-in-arm together, as he came out of the Banqueting - Room, where the King had been touching for the evil, although his transient glance of the man's figure did not allow him to recognize Mark Walton.

In one instance, the growing attachment of the latter enabled him to afford Julia an essential service. On the day that she had been rescued from the fire, and sent away in a carriage by the King's orders, he hap

pened to recognize her as the vehicle drove up to the

back-door of Baptist May's apartments. The latter was the keeper of the Privy Purse, and the chosen minister of his Majesty's private amours; a circumstance which immediately suggested to Mark Walton the motives with which his cousin was conveyed to this diresputable haunt. Too abject a courtier to interfere openly with any proceeding in which the royal pleasures were concerned, he contented himself for the present with noticing the person who had accompanied her, who proved to be one of the King's minions, with whom he had a slight acquaintance. By throwing himself in this man's way, and alluding to the affair in which he had been engaged in a tone of raillery and badinage, he extracted from him all the particulars; and no sooner learnt that Julia was in a state of insensibility at the time of the rescue, than his crafty and scheming brain suggested to him the possibility of his passing himself off as her deliverer. If, in addition to this claim upon her gratitude, he could release her from her present dangerous predi

cament, he flattered himself that such important services would go far to counteract any prejudice she might imbibe against him for his conduct towards his uncle, even should he fail to make it appear that he was driven to act in that affair by an inevitable necessity.

The great difficulty was to extricate her from Bab May's clutches without compromising himself or appearing in the transaction; for he was sensible that if he made the King his enemy, the confiscated estate would, in all probability, never reach his hands, and he should have then incurred the odium of his uncle's sacrifice without reaping a single advantage. After some days' plotting and planning, he presented himself to Lady Castlemaine, declared his passion for Julia, stated the circumstances under which the King had ordered her to be secreted in Bab May's apartments, enlarged upon her dazzling charms and great powers of fascination, in order to provoke her ladyship's jealousy, and concluded by imploring her assistance in effecting the liberation of his mistress. This her ladyship, always afraid of new rivals, readily undertook to do; adding that there was no time to be lost, as the King, who had been confined to his room from a severe cold occasioned by his exertions at the time of the Fire, meant to go out that day for the first time, and she had heard him, not two hours before, give orders that May should be in attendance in the afternoon.

Between the Keeper of the King's privy purse and her ladyship, there had long existed a league offensive and defensive, cemented by a sense of mutual advan

tage from its continuance, and a fear of the consequences they might respectively entail upon each other by a rupture.

There was therefore little difficulty in the present negotiation. Her ladyship undertook to bear him harmless; and May, who knew that it was much safer to offend the King than the King's mistress, willingly introduced her to his prisoner, and suffered Mark Walton to accompany her into the apartment. The clothes that Julia wore at the time of the fire had been so soiled by dirt and smoke, as to be utterly unfit for use, and she had therefore no alternative but to put on those which were supplied to her by a tire-woman sent for that purpose, although from their style of fashion and splendour they were suited neither to her taste nor her situation. Lady Castlemaine stated the object of her visit, attributed her interference to the solicitations of Mark Walton, eulogised his courage in thus exposing himself to the King's wrath, and perhaps to utter ruin, to effect her liberation, and concluded by urging her to put on her hood and make her escape immediately, as the King would be likely to visit that apartment in the course of the afternoon. Julia needed no second solicitation; she speedily prepared for flight in company with her deliverers; her ladyship's key let them out of the private door of Whitehall Garden into the Park; and such were the circumstances under which their appearance together had excited such an utter and agonizing astonishment in the mind of Jocelyn.

Julia took leave of Lady Castlemaine with the most fervent thanks for her timely interference, and, escorted