said, when, for many years, widows and maids had been trying to captivate Lord Sevridge; and Alice's mother, by her own unsophisticated blindness of heart, had placed a barrier between the father and daughter, as Lord Sevridge could not acknowledge Miss Lemington as his child.

Lord Cunnington now understood the delicacy of his very superior-minded wife's conduct; he acknowledged that pride was his besetting sin, and he might have been too proud to receive under his roof the daughter Lord Sevridge had so long neglected.

But Lady Cunnington heard the erring nobleman's strange confession, and he shed tears when he owned how unworthy he was of the trust which had come to his share; then it was that, for the first time in her wedded life, Lady Cunnington kept a secret from her husband, and her conscience whispered the time would come when that husband would thank her.

It had come now, for Lord Cunnington really loved the amiable Alice; and, although he had a strong penchant for ancestral pride, it was in the main point far from reprehensible; he had feared that a secret of a different nature hung in the mystery of the young girl's birth, and even then he had been striving not to visit the parent's weakness on the child; but now he pressed Lord Sevridge's hands, and he exclaimed, "Alice shall know that I have discovered her parentage; but it may be as well that she should marry my son before she knows her father, young people very seldom keep a secret; when she is married her husband will take care to let the world be just as wise as he pleases."

"You shall do as you like," replied Lord Sevridge; " you have indeed more claim to Alice than I have; and much as I should wish to call her by that familiar name, I am

worthily punished for my past wickedness. Beautiful as Alice is, her mother, Cunnington, was far more lovely, that is to say, the daughter's beauty depends much upon the opinion of the beholder; but the mother's was too striking to be questionable, and wretch-villain, that I was, I killed her !"

Lord Sevridge paced up the room in unfeigned anguish, but at length, looking at Lord Cunnington, he exclaimed

"How selfish, how wrong of me, to have agitated you; what can I do for you?"

Ring the bell," said Lord Cunnington; "I believe I ought to have taken my draught ere this."

Lady Cunnington entered the room when she heard the long expected summons, and Lord Sevridge, pressing her hand, left the room, tears involuntarily falling down his cheeks.

He sought his own room, and most beneficial were the thoughts which flowed from his overcharged mind; and that heart, so long the abode of concealed wretchedness, was lightened of its heavy load.

Lord Sevridge had been his own foe; when men had willingly owned his ascendancy, when applause had followed his footsteps, and the voice of public opinion had wreathed bouquets of immortal flowers for him, still he was the mighty foe, standing in the light of his own happiness, and very bitter was the fruit of the roseate blossomed tree. Like some wandering spirit haunting its abode of earth, visible only to those upon whose vision it chose to appear, so, hidden from all save himself, the conscience racked with remorse had embittered the nectared cup of delight which the world most temptingly offered the nobleman of parliamentary fame and public

renown. The voice of that conscience would never be silenced. It had often been busily whispering in the graver duties of life; it had spoken in the gilded saloons of mirth; it had thrilled in the midnight hour; and spoken loudly, most loudly, when bruised in spirit, humbled in soul, Lord Sevridge knelt amidst God's own in the temple of his holy presence.

His heart had been fevered by remorse, and his pulse beat quickly, unevenly, to the throbbing time of tardy repentance; dreams had haunted his midnight slumbers, and still, for nineteen years, Lord Sevridge had continued to keep his own torturing secret. For nineteen years he possessed a treasure he was ashamed to own, merely because the superficial gloss of aristocracy did not gild a casket of rarest value; but the gem within was as pure, as fair, as the flower whose name his wife bore.