able pause he looked up; Julia, to hide the confusion occasioned by so strange an address, was stooping to caress a dog of Fitz-Ullin's, which, since its first entrance, had been importuning for notice. Our hero, with a bitter smile, arose and walked towards a window.

"Surely," he murmured to himself, "I need not wish-I need not desire-yet—nothing— nothing short of infatuation could extenuate-❞

The entrance of Lord L, followed shortly by Frances, and soon after by Lady Oswald, who was now on a visit at Lodore, put an end to this strange interview. The dreadful occurrence of the murder was fresh in the minds of all. The subject was entered upon immediately: they spoke of how severely Mrs. Montgomery had felt the shock. Particulars were minutely enquired into by Lord L, and many comments made by each in turn. Julia, indeed, said the least; for she found that, whenever she

VOL. III.

spoke, Fitz-Ullin watched every word that fell from her lips, with a kind of attention which was distressing, as well as embarrassing, and she shortly therefore quitted the room. Frances, who had done so before, now returned with a message from her grandmamma, requesting that Fitz-Ullin would go to her, as she was unable to leave her own apartment.

On obeying the summons he had received, Fitz-Ullin found his kind old friend sitting up in her bed, and Mr. Jackson and Julia with her, endeavouring to compose her spirits.

She was greatly affected on seeing FitzUllin, and shed tears, which she had not before done; for there was, she said, a horror mingled with her sorrow for Henry, which would not suffer her to weep. She feared that he had died without a just sense of religion. Fitz-Ullin said, with some hesitation, that he had latterly possessed much of Henry's confidence, and that he had reason to believe that

he had fixed his hopes of happiness, (in this life at least,) where no ungentle feeling could find a place where, indeed, scarcely a temptation to err could have reached him, and where the purest Christian principles would have been daily cultivated by the hand of domestic affection; and that such ties, he should hope, no man would voluntarily seek while he continued to be the sport of unfixed opinions, or the slave of irregular habits. Julia and Fitz-Ullin left Mrs. Montgomery's room together. As soon as he had closed the door, he stopped short, took one of her hands in both of his, and looked full in her face with an expression of tender, or rather kindly enquiry, for there was no presumption in his manner. He pronounced her name, then paused. She met his scrutinizing gaze with a countenance, first of surprise, and, finally, displeasure, withdrew her hand, and, without speaking, preceded him to the drawing-room.

CHAPTER XLI.

"Thou standest charg'd

With murder, monstrous and deliberate !"

THE next day the papers were filled with an account of the trial of the murderers of Mr. Henry St. Aubin. The murder was proved; yet, strange to say, the murderers were acquitted.

The Captain of the privateer spoke his own defence. He was, he said, a Frenchman fighting for his country. He was not, even by the laws of war, a prisoner; for he had not lowered his colours. He had as good a right to recover. possession of his ship as the English had in the first instance to capture her; and if lives. were lost in the struggle, it was but the fate of

war.

This defence was admitted, and the midnight murderer of his own son acquitted by the blindness of mortal judgment.

The papers proceeded to state that the murderers having been remanded for a fresh trial on fresh charges, the principal was found the next morning alone in the prison with his brains beat out. The black had made his escape. The particulars were supposed to be as follows: The villains had first, it would appear, by their united strength, forced a bar of their window. From the bloody appearance at one end of the heavy iron weapon thus obtained, and the battered state of the head of the privateer captain, it was quite evident that the black had used the bar to knock down and murder his master; whom, as the wretch was his inferior in strength, he must have taken unawares. large wound on the back of the head of the deceased, strengthened this opinion. It was supposed that the black's motive for committing

A