"But I am not free," was his response. "You were kind to her; I observed that you liked to be near her, listening to her songs and her prattle." ride over to Hillminster, and consult Jessie; sole comment, as she came to the conclusion, I must prevail on her to undertake it. I dare was- If you were free, Philip, I would bid not face Lady Mary; and as for this child," you make her your wife; you could not have he paused, with an exclamation of intolerable a dearer or a better." compassion and rage, his hand on the letter containing her fond confession, her innocent, joyous reciprocation of all the tender things said to her in the fictitious epistle which she had received as from himself. He rang the bell, and gave orders to have his horse saddled and brought round to the door within ten minutes; and at the end of that time he was mounted and galloping away to Hillminster, through the driving rain. Sir Jasper Raymond's house was in the Close, not far from the deanery, and Mr. Digby Stuart's appearance there before ten o'clock in such inclement weather gave rise to some speculations amongst the inmates of other stately dwellings about the minster, who happened at that hour to be taking note of what was passing out of doors. He dismounted, drenched and dripping, and, asking for Lady Raymond, was ushered into the library, where she joined him almost immediately. "Jessie, I want your help," said he, advancing to meet her as she entered. "It is always at your service, Philip; what is your present need? Sit down, pray; you look ill." "Yes, yes; I am conscious of it now. She pleased re-there can be no blame attached to her. Many a man has offered marriage to a woman, and been accepted on slighter grounds than I gave her. But, Jessie, it is not to excuse her I am here now- - she needs no excuse to me of all the world. It is to entreat you to be my mediator; to entreat you to see Lady Mary, and explain the cruel jest that has been played upon the child. If any sacrifice within my power could spare it to them I would make it, but I am fast bound hand and foot." Lady Raymond was frightened at his proposition. "Would it not be easier to compel Isabel Vernon to write, and own to her wicked mischief?" suggested she. "Easier for us, certainly, but not for Sibyl or her mother. You have kind ways, Jessie; if any one can soften the pain of wounded love and pride, you can. Let me burn her poor little letter; it is sacred as a surprised secret of life and death." He took a few per"Some person has played off a sorry jest fumed twigs from a spill-case on the chimupon Lady Mary Rivers' daughter and my-ney, lighted them at the fire, and held the self. I hardly know how to tell even you, Jessie, it is so cruelly mortifying: and I am at my wits' end how to act. Sibyl has written me a dear little letter in answer to one she believes me to have written to her, of which, God knows, I never thought or penned a line." "It is Isabel Vernon," said Lady Raymond. "Isabel Vernon! Her own cousin! A woman who must have known the sweet, innocent thing she is." "Yes; Isabel hates Sibyl-only her own bitter heart can tell why- and this is her shameful revenge. The poor girl betrayed her secret to me early; and Isabel's sharp eyes spied it out a week ago. Let me see Sibyl's letter, then I can advise you better what steps to take." letter in the flame, until it shrunk into tindery film, and fluttered down upon the ashes of the hearth. "You wish me to go to them, and to-day?" said Lady Raymond. "Yes, Jessie, I am requiring a hard thing of you!" "My heart aches for Sibyl, Philip; have I not known the sorrow? but mine was the sorrow without the cruel shame that will embitter hers. I know not how she will bear it, for she is as proud and pure as she is passionate and tender. Isabel Vernon has one plea for her baseness-she does not know what love means. No woman who has ever loved could have played this sorry jest in such deadly earnest." "Isabel Vernon's part can wait. You will go to Sibyl and Lady Mary?" Mr. Digby Stuart gave it reluctantly, but "Yes. Sir Jasper is not ailing much this he did give it; and as Lady Raymond read morning; you must keep him company in my it, womanly tears glittered in her eyes. Her absence, and explain as far as needs. If I prepare now, I can start by the noon train is it? What ails her, Lady Raymond?" which reaches Scarbro about five." stammered she, greatly alarmed. They watched by her till the morning, and there was no change. They watched by her through the sunny autumnal day that came after the storm, and there was no change when the sun went down; there was no change any more on earth in the breathing statue that had been instinct once with youth and joyous love, and all the hopes of life in blossom-time. "God bless you, Jessie! you are a good "It must be the shock; let us lay her woman. Trouble has made you very piti- down; when she gets leave to cry she will be ful?" They shook hands on it, trusty friends better." So they laid her down, and where now, who had been lovers once, and in half they laid her there she remained, never closan hour Lady Raymond was on her way. ing eye or moving limb or lip, suddenly At Scarbro the hours had been strangely stricken as by a total suspension of every long with Sibyl and her mother; and nei-sense, every faculty. They watched by her ther had done much to occupy them. Sibyl the night through, and there was no change. watched the rain, and the trees, and the sea, with folded hands on her lap and frequent sighs. When it began to darken, Lady Mary bade her come away from the window to the fireside; but she either did not heed or did not hear, for she was still cowering within the curtains when the maid arrived to close them, and brought in lights. The room-door was left ajar while the young woman performed her duties, and during that moment a voice was heard on the stairs which caused Sibyl to start to her feet and cry: "It is Lady Raymond. Why does she come here?" Her mother had no time to answer before Lady Raymond entered with an ineffectual pretence of ease which she soon dropped. She kissed Sibyl, who stood on the spot where she had risen and made no advance to greet her, and then seated herself beside Lady Mary, keeping fast hold of her tremulous hand. 66 "Tell us," whispered the mother faintly, glancing towards her daughter. "I guess, but tell us quickly." "Lady Mary, that love-letter Sibyl replied to yesterday was not written by Mr. Digby Stuart, but by her cousin Isabel Vernon," answered Lady Raymond, forcing out the words with a choking sensation. She could not have added another syllable to soften them if her own life had depended on it, and for the next five minutes there was not a sound in the room. Lady Mary was the first to break the silence. "Where is that letter, Sibyl? Let us show it to Lady Raymond," was what she said. Sibyl neither moved nor spoke. "My darling, give me the letter," repeated her mother, rising and going to her. Still Sibyl was mute and motionless. Her mother took it out of her bosom; she neither resisted nor uttered a word. Her mother kissed her cooingly as she would have kissed a baby, but she might as well have kissed a face of stone. "What And how did it all end? This is a true tale, and therefore it can have no end in particular; no neat tying up of loose tags; no decisive sentences of moral or poetical justice. "I did it in jest. I never expected the letter would deceive her or Aunt Mary either," was Isabel Vernon's quivering defence when her work was brought home to her. Goodnatured persons gave her the benefit of the doubt. Sibyl survived several years. Many expedients were devised to rouse her; cruel expedients they may seem to us. For a little while she was parted from her mother, and during that period Mr. Digby Stuart and her Cousin Isabel were introduced into her presence, with some vague hope that the sight of them might break the spell that held fastbound her powers of volition. All in vain. They were alike to her; him she had loved, and the woman who had done worse than slain her! Isabel disguised herself carefully in her dread of recognition; she need not have dreaded it; Sibyl did not know her own mother. After a time, professional treatment failing, and the poor soul being quite harmless, Lady Mary took her home again, and they lived in an old-fashioned house, inclosed in a walled garden, in one of the quiet suburbs of Hillminster. George Lansmere once begged to be allowed to see her. "Why give yourself the pain, my dear boy? Lady Mary said. "She will not remember you, nor will you remember her." But he did; he saw | woman; they married as soon as he was free sweet Sibyl still in that passive figure sitting-free from what or from whom is matter of in the sun, burnt-brown her face as a glean-speculation to the general community of Hiller's in the harvest-fields, with short rusted minster still. But Lady Anne Vernon, and one hair, and wide pathetic eyes, in which there was no expression but the expression of an animal, wounded, and in desperate pain. Whether she really suffered I cannot tell. Lady Mary long entertained hopes of her restoration; and when friends asked after her daughter, which they did often because it gratified her to know her darling was not forgotten, her usual reply was that she fancied she was a little clearer, a little brighter. or two others of Mrs. Digby Stuart's nearest and dearest friends, know now that their long separation was due to an old, old folly of his boyhood, when he was deluded into a secret marriage in Paris with a beautiful white witch of a woman who shortly left him, and would afterwards neither live with him nor die to release him. She set up her tent in Rome, and held there a semi-vagabond court of all nations, maintained in part by his liberal allowance, but chiefly by the contributions levied on her train of Platonic admirers, artist folk, gamblers, and the like. She called herself by a picturesque title, and was eccentric rather than bad. She had been in this state nearly seven years, when one Sunday morning-Easter-day morning it was-Lady Raymond was summoned from her pillow an hour before dawn, by a message from the old-fashioned house in the suburb. Through the still streets, ere Julia Vernon married Mr. Danvers. She the world was awake, she hurried; and when has no children of her own, but she is an she entered the garden, where the first sun-excellent mother to his. rays were gleaming and the birds were all Isabel also married-well as to rank and a-twitter, Lady Mary met her-met her al- fortune, very meanly as to mate. She also most cheerfully. "Too late! you are too is childless, and on the face of her, she is an late, love; she is gone. It has pleased the unhappy, dissatisfied woman, whom few pergood God to take her," said she; then reply-sons love-she herself loving few or none. ing to a felt but unspoken inquiry, she The dean is dead, and Lady Anne lives added, “No; she did not know me-not even with her sister Lady Mary, in the old-fashat the last. But she will know me in heaven, ioned house in the suburb. she will know me again in heaven! Sir Jasper Raymond died in the autumn of the same year as Sibyl, and then the gossips began to say again that Mr. Digby Stuart would marry the widow; but he did not. Why, remained still their secret. It was not until nearly ten years after the holy Easter morning when Death came with his merciful order of release to Sibyl, that they were privately married in London. They were then no longer young, but Jessie was always a sweet and loving George Lansmere is lieutenant-colonel now by promotion won in the field of battle. He wears many decorations, amongst others the Cross of Valor, and a bit of glory in an ugly sword cut across the left cheek and temple. He is still a bachelor, and his own mother being long since dead, he calls Lady Mary "mother; "when he has a few days' leave to spare he goes home to her like a son. This is all the end I have to tell to this story of a sorry jest played out in earnest. The Many Mansions in the House of the Father, Scripturally Discussed and Practically Considered. By G. S. Faber, B. D. Brown & Co. Pp. 456.-This thick volume is inscribed to the late Archbishop of Canterbury, and contains a prefatory memoir of the author by Francis A. Faber, B. D. The writer believes the heavenly bodies to be "The Many Mansions," and that Heaven will be the Earth renewed, and not a moral but a material heaven, as "after the Resurrection we shall exist in a solid material body." He believes, moreover, that angels are like man, and are spirits combined with matter; and that" the Place" of what he calls "Penal Confinement" is in the bowels of the earth, while "the Intermediate State " (which he by no means confounds with Purgatory)" is immediately under the surface of the earth." In support of these and kindred views he brings erudition and scriptural and church authority, and he argues out his case very calmly.-Reader. From The Richmond Inquirer, 12 June. TWO YEARS HENCE. plank in their platform. Yet they understand very well that no matter how soundly In two years, as many persons hope, we their armies may be happily beaten ; no matmay possibly have peace- that is, always ter how completely Lincoln's present war provided we continue to repulse and defeat policy may be condemned by its results, yet the invading enemy. The Yankee" Democ- all this will not be enough to enable the unracy" is certainly rousing itself, and prepar- terrified Democracy to clutch the" spoils "—or, ing for a new struggle (at the ballot-box) in as they phrase it, to restore the Constitution the great cause of the "spoils," or, as they of their fathers. This, of itself would never call it, the cause of Constitutional Liberty. give them a Peace-Democrat President and Those Democrats are evidently beginning to Cabinet; it would only result in another raise a Peace platform for their next Presiden- Abolitionist Administration, with a new Sectial election and if they have the good luck retary of War, and a new Commander-into be helped on and sustained by more and Chief, and a slightly different programme for more serious disasters of the Yankee army in" crushing the rebellion." Those Black Rethe field, there is no doubt that the present devourers of the said spoils at Washington may soon be so discredited and decried that our enemy's country would be ripe for such peaceful ballot-box revolution. publicans are in power; after long waiting, pining, intriguing in the cold shade of the opposition; and they have now the numerical preponderance so decidedly that they both can and will hold on to the office with a clutch nothing without" the South," as they persist in terming these Confederate States; and they cannot bring themselves to admit the thought that we would refuse to unite with them (as alas! we used to do) in a grand Universal Presidential campaign, for a Democratic President, with a Peace platform, and the “ Constitution as it is." In fact, this whole two years' war, and the two years' more war which has yet to be gone through, is itself, in their eyes, only a Presidential campaign, only somewhat more vivacious than ordinary. It is sincerely to be hoped that those ear-like death. The Democrats can do absolutely nest champions of constitutional freedom will be helped on and sustained in the manner they require-namely, by continued and severe reverses in the field; and it is the first and most urgent duty of our countrymen so to help and sustain that Democratic party. It is nothing to us which of their factions may devour their "spoils ; " just as little does it signify to us whether they recover or do not recover that constitutional liberty which they so wantonly threw away in the mad pursuit of Southern conquest and plunder. But it is of the utmost importance to us to aid in stimulating disaffection among Yankees against their own Government, and in demoralizing and disintegrating society in that God-abandoned country. We can do this only in one way namely, by thrashing their armies and carrying the war to their own firesides. Then, indeed, conscientious constitutional principles will hold sway; peace platforms will look attractive; arbitrary arrests will become odious, and habeas corpus be quoted at a premium. This is the only way we can help them. In this sense, and to this extent, those Democrats" are truly our allies, and we shall endeavor to do whatever in bringing about peace. If a man our duty by them. This explains the Vallandigham Peace Meetings in New York and New Jersey; and the "manly declarations" of Mr. Horatio Seymour and other patriots. "Do not let us forget," says Fernando Wood, writing to the Philadelphia meeting, "that those who perpetrate such outrages as the arrest and banishment of Mr. Vallandigham, do so as necessary war measures. Let us, therefore, strike at the cause, and declare for peace and against the war." This would sound very well if the said falling from a tower could arrest his fall by But they evidently look for other and fur- declaring against it, then the declarations of ther help at our hands, and of quite a differ- Democrats against the war might be of some ent sort. No doubt they are pleased for the avail. As it is, they resemble that emphatic present, with the efficient aid which the Con- pronouncement of Mr. Washington Hunt: federate army is affording them. Chancel-"Let it be proclaimed upon the housetops, lorsville was a God-send to them, and the tre- that no citizen of New York shall be arrested mendous repulse at Port Hudson is quite a without process of law." There is no use in bawling from the housetops what everybody knows to be nonsense. Or this resolution of the New Jersey meeting: Resolved, That in the illegal seizure and banishment of the Hon. C. L. Vallandigham, the laws of our country have been outraged, the name of the United States disgraced, and the rights of every citizen menaced, and that it is now the duty of a law respecting people to demand of the Administration that it at once and forever desist from such deeds of despotism and crime. [Enthusiasm.] Demand, quotha? The starling that Mr. Sterne saw in the cage, said only "I can't get out." It would have been more "manly" to scream, “I demand to get out-I proclaim on the housetops that I will get out." Another of the New Jersey resolutions throws an instructive light upon this whole movement, and its objects. "Subjugation or annihilation being alike impossible, I am in favor of an immediate cessation of hostilities, for an armistice,that 'mid the lull of the strife the heat of passion shall have time to cool, and the calm, calm, Resolved, That we renew our declaration of attachment to the Union, pledging to its friends, wherever found, our unwavering support, and to its enemies, in whatever guise, then "inviting our co-operation." During Here is the whole plan: an armistice, and our undying hostility, and that, God willing, we will stand by the Constitution and laws that armistice they hope that the " " and a 66 of our country, and under their sacred shield majestic voice of reason will maintain and defend our liberty and Christianity" might do something considerrights, "peaceably if we can, forcibly if we able. The game, as they calculate, would must." Great cheering.] then be on the board, with stakes so tempting! Mr. Wall would endeavor "to learn from us what our demands are." This phrase," wherever found," implies that there are friends of the Union in this Confederacy, and the resolution obligingly pledges to them the support of the New Jersey Democracy-not surely without an equivalent return. To the same meeting, Gen. Fitz John Porter writes a letter, declaring, of course, for the Constitution and resistance to despotism, and ending thus : "The contest of arms, however, will not be required; the certain and peaceful remedy will be found in the ballot-box. Let us all possess our soul in patience. The remedy is ours. common Anything in reason he would be prepared to grant us: but if we replied, our demands are, that you bring away your troops from every inch of our soil, that you leave the Border States free to decide on their own destiny, that you evacuate all our forts and towns which you now hold, and make us rid of you and the whole breed of you forever, then Mr. Wall would exclaim, What, do you call that the calm, majestic voice of reason? is that your common Christianity? He would say, when I spoke of the calm majestic, etc., I meant the spoils; when I said a common Christianity, I meant money. Let us talk rationally-how much common Christianity will you take? Gen. Fitz John knows well that the remedy is not theirs, unless "the South " consent to throw its votes into that same ballot-box; and it is for this, and this only, that the In vain is a net spread in the sight of any Democratic hook is baited with "Peace." bird. We are 'ware of them; and we will But in a speech of Senator Wall, of New Jer- watch them well, and the friends of the sey, before a Democratic Club of Philadelphia Union, "wheresoever found.” Our views go (which we find printed in The Sentinel), is a | a little further than theirs—we hope to so dispassage more fully expounding the Demo-organize and disintegrate society in their councratic plan than any other we have seen. He try that they will rush into armed revolution says:-and anarchy. We spit upon their ballot-box. |