me," said Lord Cunnington, in a ruminating manner, "I hardly like to....

""

"Not a word," replied Alice, playfully placing her hand before the nobleman's lips; "I will not have the consent of a sick couch, when your words now would be different to those you would pronounce were you in health-only, I pray you, my lord, wish me no husband save Augustus.'

Poor Augustus!" said Lord Cunnington; "would that he were here! it was a hair-brained scheme to leave his native land; the sea is treacherous,-my poor boy!"

All trace of bloom vanished from Alice Lemington's face, for she had, indeed, often wakefully thought of the deep-raging sea; in the midnight hour she fancied she heard the tempest's howling, and her last words of prayer had ever been for Cunnington's safety.

When, burning with the fever of a newer

love, Cunnington thought not of her,—she, trusting girl, had ever his image before her; every room in the Abbey reminded her of him; and the large portrait which reflected those dark eyes and clustering brown curls was looked up to with a species of adoration by the energetic girl.

She never dreamed or imagined Cunnington loving any one else; but she often reflected that the rising flames of genius might chase her memory from her lover's thoughts.

Lord Cunnington had suddenly drooped without any apparent cause of ailment, until a strict medical examination had settled the question, by pronouncing that the suf ferer had a constitutional internal disease of the spine, which must, though perhaps after a lengthened period of suffering, at length consign him to his grave.

The blow was unexpected; the invalid

was not more shocked than his weeping wife; and Alice, although suffering a pang as acute as the nearest relative of the amiable nobleman, was, nevertheless, expected to be more calm, and she exerted herself so well, that Lady Cunnington listened to her voice, and quite forgot her tender years.

There was a refinement in every thought of Alice Lemington's mind, and yet so completely was she the enthusiastic child of impulsive imagination, that at times every idea was buoyant, every feeling full of hope; then, again, her thoughts were tinged with a halo of poetical softness-of thoughts "poetically sad," ideas which none, save the children of poesy, know how to understand.

The yellow tinge of autumn could conjure up in her imagination a tale of softened thoughts, the gay dawn of the spring

would clothe her ideas in gladness; she was the offspring of poesy, and the child of imagination.

But, reader, believe not that morbid thoughts swell the poet's mind,—oh, no! Alice Lemington had the most resplendent of young hope; her sky was far oftener "set in azured streaks," than clustering in "clouds densely dull."

rays

The sophistry of age, the deepest books ever penned, could not have been more consolatory to Lady Cunnington than listening to that youthful mind; from her rich tones poured forth those Christian vivid thoughts of hope, and Lady Cunnington, subdued in spirit, saddened in heart, pressed her

young friend to her aching bosom, and called her "daughter."

"Here is a letter for you, dear Alice," said Lady Cunnington, as they sat together to their dull luncheon.

"It is from poor Mary Grey," said Alice, as she opened her note; and as she had no secrets from Lady Cunnington, she read aloud as follows:

"DEAR ALICE,

"Brighton.

"You must not imagine you are absent from my thoughts; but, alas! I myself am still an invalid, and the tone of my letter, so descriptive of the mental depression which illness engenders, would have ill-suited one who, alas! herself requires consolation.

"Lord Sevridge joined our party yester day, and we were inexpressibly pained to hear sad accounts of your invalid, poor Lord Cunnington; if ever the good wishes of his fellow-men could avail anything, how speedily would the amiable nobleman be restored to health.

"I hardly dare talk of myself; time may