a complete triumph; but then, alas! he hastened to the house of her he loved, to surrender at discretion.

He found her mother in the drawing-room, calmly embroidering in worsted, after a fashion which the good lady had learned in Germany, when her husband was Envoy-extraordinary to the court of; and, scarcely looking up from the stitches, the ci-devant Envoy's wife informed her young friend that her daughter Blanche, as he would be glad to hear, was just engaged to the eldest son of Viscount Somebody, the sound of whose name was so completely deadened by the cannon-ball-like announcement which preceded it, that poor Arthur Gray, as we shall call him, neither heard, nor wished to hear, who was the man so much happier than himself.

Now it may be supposed, from the manner in which we have commenced this Tale, that Arthur Gray, blessed with that spirit of perverseness which instantly casts away one good thing because it cannot get another, at once resigned his secretaryship, and wandered on

into the romantic Pyrenees, for the purpose of increasing his grief, and feeding his disappointment; but far, very far, was he from such conduct. He certainly looked as pale and as thunderstruck as if he had heard that Blanche was dead; but, after the first moment given to bitter pain, he recovered himself, said something civil about nothing, and walked out of a house he was never to enter again. The next morning, at seven o'clock, saw him rolling slowly up Shooter's-hill, with a good view of Lady James's Tower, and the Dover Road before him; and on the eleventh or twelfth morning after, he was calmly seated in the discharge of his official duties.

Dull and tedious those diplomatic duties always are; but they gave his mind occupation; and that was what he wisely coveted. Did he think of her he had so dearly loved? He did, often; he saw her in his dreams, waking as well as sleeping; and he fervently prayed that he to whom she had confided her fate would strive as zealously, as fondly, as tenderly, to render it a happy one, as Arthur

Gray would have done, had it fallen to his lot.

The newspapers of course followed him; and, in the one which issued from the press immediately after his departure, he saw it fully announced that the beautiful Blanche Harlowe, daughter of Sir Francis Harlowe, late His Britannic Majesty's Envoy at the court of was about to bestow her hand upon the Honourable Mr. whose name has

nothing to do with this history. Arthur Gray took great care not to read the births, deaths, and marriages in the public journals for the succeeding twelve months, though he bore the rest of the newspaper with the fortitude of a Spartan.

He heard seldom from his family; for his brother, like a great many other eldest sons, made himself uncommonly disagreeable to his younger fraternity, and, since he had succeeded to his father, Lord Wycomb, had certainly increased and prospered in disagreeableness. Only one letter, then, did Arthur

Gray receive from him, during nine months; and that was to announce his approaching nuptials with a fair, but not a wealthy daughter of a very extensive family.

"Heaven help the poor girl, and endue her with patience!" thought Arthur Gray, as he remembered some little peculiarities in his brother's temper; when, lo! three posts after brought him a letter with a black seal, telling him that his brother was not married, but dead. Thereupon Arthur Gray, now Lord Wycomb, resigned his office, and set out to travel, as we have seen, through countries he had never visited before, feeling little inducement to return to England for some time.

All this tedious episode we have told, solely to show why he was melancholy; for no man in this world has any right to be melancholy without just cause. As the carriage rolled on, then, he strove, as far as possible, to derive pleasure from every thing-to occupy his thoughts, and engage his mind with pleasant images-when, had Fancy been left to choose her own path, she would fain have wandered

back, to mourn over the desolate hearth left by a dream of domestic love, long past. He was a very handsome man, as this world goes, where the human face divine is sometimes sent forth from the great hand of Nature as if she had turned it over to an apprentice; and but too often defaced by ourselves, our follies, or our passions: nevertheless, as he was not a vain man, and cared little for-thought little indeed of his own good looks, it could not be for the sake of contrast that he had chosen the ugliest personage for a servant that ever yet sat behind or before a travellingcarriage.

In the present instance the servant sat before; for, whether it were that britskas had not then come in, or that Arthur Gray, as we shall still call him, loved better a calêche, such was the vehicle he travelled in; and indeed, though it was a very handsome equipage, it not only had the box before, but bore, painted in small upon the side, the arms of a younger brother, being the identical carriage in which he had travelled to exercise the functions of secretary of legation. The arms, indeed, have nothing