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 clasp, "be what it will it is to me from this moment the most welcome incident of a weary life. To you, dearest Edith— forgive me, I should have said Miss Bellenden, but misfortune claims strange privileges to you I have owed the few happy moments which have gilded a gloomy existence, and if I am now to lay it down, the recollection of this honour will be my happiness in the last hour of suffering."

"But is it even thus, Mr Morton? Have you, who used to mix so little in these unhappy feuds, become so suddenly and deeply implicated, that nothing short of"—

She paused, unable to bring out the word which should have come next.

"Nothing short of my life you would say?" replied Morton, in a calm, but melancholy tone; "I believe that will be entirely in the bosoms of my judges. My guards spoke of a possibility of exchanging the penalty for entry into foreign service. I thought that I could have embraced the alternative; and yet, Miss Bellenden, since