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circumstances would have made some excuse; but he passively complied. Mrs. Franklin was summoned from the room while he was reading, and he was left alone with Caroline Duncan. The passage, in which he was interrupted, embodied one of the most refined unearthly speculations of the gentle mystic; and Eustace, who had before been merely performing a mechanical task, was suddenly struck with the contrast be tween his actual state of mind, and that which the Quakeress supposed to be the literal counterpart of it. The first sensation accompanying such a discovery, when the conscience is not awake in any one who has a perception of the grotesque, is one of strange unaccountable pleasure. Eustace smiled, as a person might have smiled through whom the sentiment of the passage had sent a thrill of true heart-enjoyment. At any rate, one with much more intelligence of the human countenance than Caroline possessed, might have been misled by it.

"Thou art very much delighted with those words," she said, in an embarrassed voice.

Eustace raised his head with astonishmentnot so much at the interpretation which was put upon his look, as at the voice of the speaker, for, to the best of his recollection, Caroline had never opened a conversation with him before.

"They are very odd !" he said. "What do you think of them, Miss Duncan?"

"I do not exactly know their meaning:" she paused a moment, as if summoning all her strength, and then said, with desperate intrepidity, "I think they would suit thy sister better than me." My sister!" said Eustace, starting.

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"I-I have something to tell thee respecting her," said the Quakeress, evidently determined to proceed, cost what it might.

"Respecting Honoria?"

"I fear thou wilt be angry-and if I followed my own inclination, I would not tell it thee," continued Caroline.

"I could not be angry with you, Miss Duncan, but I had rather not hear any bad news of my sister, and therefore I beg that you will not, for my sake, put yourself to the pain of speaking upon the subject."

She was silent for a moment. "It was not of my own will that I began to speak," she resumed, in a plaintive voice.

"Not of your own will, Miss Duncan ?”

"No, indeed; indeed, it was not. I was desired to tell thee

"By whom?" said Eustace.

"Oh! thou wilt never forgive me," said Caroline, bursting into tears, "but I said very little to friend Hartenfield, and she found it out."

"Do not distress yourself, Miss Duncan," said our hero; "in a short time it may signify very little who knew me as Mr. Green or Mr. Conway."

"Thou art not going away?" said the Quakeress.

"I shall not stay here above a day or two longer."

Caroline looked fixedly at him for a moment, and then fell into hysterics.

Eustace exerted all his talents to recover her, but without avail, till Mrs. Franklin entered; then at once, by one of those singular exertions of the organ of secretiveness, which so much astonish us in the other sex, she was able to leave the room without exciting her aunt's observation. Before she returned, Eustace made an apology for retiring also.

Eustace had, by this time, some experience of Mrs. Hartenfield's proceedings, and he instantly conjectured how the case stood. She had evidently been persuading Caroline that she was in love, and had forced her to make this embarrassing communication, (probably about nothing, or, if any thing, some wicked slander,) that he might be served, as the lawyers speak, with a notice, and so any charges of hard-heartedness or treachery to be hereafter produced against him

might hold good in equity. "Well," he said, "these are the miserable fruits of my sublime selfdevotion. It is pleasant to think that all the links

in my life will be cut at once." He wrote a few hurried and affectionate lines to Honoria,-a passionate note to Lady Edward,-commenced a long letter to Kreutzner, which he burnt,-threw himself on his couch, and slept soundly.

The parties were on the ground at the appointed hour. When it had been measured, Mr. Glover strutted up to Mr. Jenkins, and asked him if the difference could not be adjusted. Jenkins said, with business-like indifference, that he should be very glad if it could, but he supposed the principals knew best, and loaded Conway's pistols. Mr. Glover, with a trembling hand, performed the same office for Morton.

They fired at the same instant. Eustace's ball grazed Morton's hat; Morton's entered Eustace's arm. He staggered a few paces, and fell. He was carried off the ground by Mr. Jenkins.

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That, like a ling'ring poison, may chance lie

Spread in thy veins, and kill thee seven years hence.
WEBSTER.

FOUR days after this event, the whole family at Vyvyan Hall (with the exception of Mr. Vyvyan, who was still absent,) were invited to dine at the house of a relation. Honoria excused herself, and took advantage of her solitude to invite Fanny Rumbold.

She was glad to find that the novelties of a country-house were not so entirely lost upon the child as those of the country itself had been. She evinced, indeed, no childish pleasure at any thing she saw, but in her way she expressed a kind of astonishment at the size of the rooms, the antiquity of the furniture, the width of the stair

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