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 derer, they have treated me with a kindness, a consideration, an heavenly benevolence, that, towards a stranger so forlorn, could have been dictated only by the most angelic of natures!"

"Astonishing! incredible!" exclaimed Sir Jaspar. "What! do they not know your story? Have you made no appeal to their justice, their affections?"

"You will cease, Sir, to wonder, and cease also, I hope, to question me, when I tell you that here, even here, I have not made my situation known! here, even here,—to the friend of my heart, the confidant of my life, the loved and honoured descendant of the house by which I have been preserved, and from which alone I hope for protection! Judge then, how powerful must be my motives for secresy! And she,—she submits to my silence! Too high-minded for distrust, too nobly mistress of herself for impatience; and conscious that even a wish, expressed, would to me have the force of a command, she waits