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 from the magistrate to whom they were bound, and who was esteemed the one both most acute and most just in the county;—Aram, interrupted him somewhat abruptly—

"My friend, enough of this presently. But Madeline—what knows she as yet?"

"Nothing: of course we kept—"

"Exactly—exactly: you have done wisely. Why need she learn any thing as yet? Say an arrest for debt—a mistake—an absence but of a day or so at most:—you understand."

"Yes. Will you not see her, Eugene, before you go, and say this yourself?"

"I—oh God!—I! to whom this day was—No, no: save me, I implore you, from the agony of such a contrast—an interview so mournful and unavailing. No, we must not meet! But whither go we now? Not—not surely through all the idle gossips of the village—the crowd already excited to gape, and stare, and speculate on the—"

"No," interrupted Lester; "the carriages await us at the farther end of the valley. I thought