some friend or other, and then restore her to liberty and to her Randal again. She used to look so excessively pretty and interesting thus companioned, that the contrast could not fail to strike everybody. Sir John seemed particularly to admire it. CHAPTER V. Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart, Subdue the light of noon, and breathe A low and ceaseless sigh, This memory brightens o'er the past, As when the sun concealed Behind some cloud that near us hangs, Shines on a distant field. LONGFELLOW. SUCH silent reveries as that in which Randal Langford was indulging, take longer in the description than they do in the actual passage through the mind. His father and mother had not finished discussing the subject of the rooms, before he lifted up his head, and his face quite changed, so much was its habitual gloom dispersed, showed the interest he was taking in what was going on. In fact, it was no slight change which had taken place within him at the mention of that almost forgotten name. He had suffered the cloudy melancholy, that melancholy which proceeds from the indulgence of the unamiable feelings and adverse passions to become almost habitual, and nothing that occurred at Ravenscliffe seemed likely to remove it; but these tender recollections, thus revived, of the happiest moments, perhaps, literally, the only really happy moments of his life, worked wonders. The utter alienation from his father and mother in which he had permitted himself to indulge, and which had rendered the gloom of his mind so intolerable, seemed dissipated. But he knew not, and cared not why it was, or how it was, the master feeling of his mind the hatred he cherished against the man who had injured him, still remained unsoftened by these kindlier feelings. That sentiment lay deep in the recesses of his heart, passive, because no circumstances occurred to revive it, but not the less permanent and ineffaceable. The resentment he had felt against his father and mother, for what he considered their injustice and insensibility, on the contrary, had been a cause of daily irritation; but it vanished completely under the train of thoughts and feelings now presented. He thought of Eleanor Wharncliffe, and of the years gone by. A healing balm seemed to soothe the wounds of his spirit; he lifted up his head with something like cheerfulness, and listened to the talk between his father and mother. "Extremely delicate, Lady Wharncliffe writes me word, but grown surpassingly beautiful." "Abroad a year or two, and then a year and a half at Cheltenham. Four years, I think, since they were last here." "You may say five, next November." "Well, give her the room you mentioned, Madam, and spare no expense in making her comfortable. This return of the Wharncliffes shall be celebrated by us something in the manner of royal visits. .... I wonder whether Sir John laughs as much as he used to do." diminish with years. It came little from the heart. A mere trick! Yet Sir John is a sensible man." "So I have always thought, but could have wished him a little more solidity." Mrs. Langford sighed. "They are people of this world," said she, sententiously; "both he and dear Lady Wharncliffe. Too much so, I fear but time and advancing years may do much. There are the seeds of good and who knows what the quiet of the country, and associations somewhat different from those which they have lately been accustomed to msy do for him and poor Lady Wharncliffe? We ought never to despair of any For she was resolved, and so was Mr. Langford resolved, to find nothing amiss in the Wharncliffes. Their charitable views of their friends' characters and conduct being mightily aided by their secret inclinations. I should have liked to have heard what they would have said of the Wharncliffes if they had not been friends of their own, connections of whom they were not a little proud! Randal keeps walking up and down the gravel walk which runs along the summit of the cliff, and commands a view of the carriage-road, waiting the arrival of the expected guests. His heart is throbbing in a strange way, and the whole man experiencing a sense of happiness to which he had long been a stranger, great, it might be called exquisite, hap piness, intoxicating as new wine to one little accustomed to it. "More beautiful than ever more delicate than ever!" The words were not forgotten. He pictured her the same sweet, endearing creature whom he had loved so well. He never asked himself whether all the rest would continue upon the same footing, whether this lovely creature would remain inclined to love him as a man, in the way she had done as a boy. Still less did he recollect that, love him or not, there could not, in the nature of things, be the same artless display of her feelings. But he troubled not his head with these questions. He kept picturing her to himself the same in all respects, except that the child had bloomed into the woman; and a woman he had already appropriated to himself. A something in his father and mother's manner, indeed, might have justified this feeling, had he sought, which he did not, either to justify or to account for it. He had, in old days, been accustomed so entirely to consider Eleanor Wharncliffe as his own peculiar possession, snd she had so invariably seemed to admit the claim, and to cling to him as her sole friend and protector, that now they were to meet again, his heart, as a matter of course, renewed the feeling. Besides, a man heir to a large estate, representative of an ancient family, and saturated with the sense of his own high claims and pretensions, does not usually anticipate much difficulty in pressing his suit upon any disengaged woman. So he walked up and down the terrace in a state of comfort and satisfaction to which he had very long been a stranger. Delivered from what might have |