dawn of morning, was, nevertheless, busily engaged in his own room, in giving his valet directions about packing.

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There, that will do; call me in half an hour," said he, impatiently, and he was left alone.

Tears trickled involuntarily down his cheeks; tears embittered by reproach : he must look again at his mother, and own that no glimmering of wiser thoughts had reigned in his mind; he would see the mild father he loved, suffering, ill, perhaps dying; and he, the only son and heir. What ! could he look at that usefully employed parent and say he was worthy to succeed him? And Alice Lemington, she who once had filled his wavering heart, he must tell her that another had taken her place.

Poor Cunnington! he wept tears of shame'; and his eyes resting on the English papers which were on his bed, he saw traced the

name of those sons of genius who had enlisted under the banner of Fame, and he was far, far from the goal.

And yet, far as was the young man from it, Fame, as a midnight dream, taunted him with its distant cry; and oftentimes he would rise with a glow of emulation for better things fanning his cheek, whilst the very struggle he made to forget the cry, made him secretly believe that he was in fact destined for one of its votaries.

But what is the use of dreaming of fame, and not shaping phantom ideas into substantial reality? and now, at the idea of returning home, Cunnington was deeply sad.

The friend who had accompanied him was slumbering in his quiet grave; and as he had been unable to give any substantial reason when he left England, so now he could give no better account of himself.

Cunnington rarely committed an egregious folly, and yet he never enjoyed a free heart; he hated secrecy, and yet he was in himself a mystery of mysteries, defying even the penetration of his own heart.

Now he felt one acute pang, the regret of his young existence; sorrow for all the hours he had wasted, and a faint determination, between hope and fear, that as he was yet in the first spring of manhood, so the summer of his life might yet be crowned with the laurels of fame.

CHAPTER X.

Though the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,

And the love which my spirit hath painted,
It never hath found but in thee.

BYRON.

The breakfast that morning was passed in unusual silence, and poor Cunnington very naturally believed that Anna was sorry for his departure. Deeply fraught with love in consequence of this discovery, were the glances which our hero directed towards his fascinating hostess.

After the sumptuous meal was despatched,

though no one did justice to that rich western repast, the baron was called away, for he had to attend to many duties as magistrate of his district. Cunnington was soon standing by Anna's side in the exquisite boudoir in which she generally spent her mornings.

Few young men could find themselves in a handsome woman's most domestic room, without looking curiously round, and discovering the bent of the beauty's mind.

Drawing was evidently Anna's favorite pursuit, and it was an art in which she greatly excelled; there was a poetic luxuriance in the landscapes her vivid imagination invented; and the same exquisite taste which marked her own toilet and enhanced her grace, was visibly painted in the rich draperies in which she pictured the heroines of her thoughts.

Cunnington turned over several very