me what it was that caused your peculiar austerity of manner on board the Euphrasia."

66

Why, that is a question which I cannot very well answer, Julia," said Fitz-Ullin, smiling and taking her hand. She persisted, however. "You must remember," he said at length," that I believed you perfectly acquainted with my sentiments. In the innocent friendship of your manner, therefore, I saw— what appeared to me, seeing through a false medium, the weakness, if I must say it, of a woman who could not altogether resign the admiration of, even a rejected lover. And, in a woman who was herself engaged, it seemed doubly cruel, to foster with smiles (that, to one who already loved, and believed his love known to her who smiled, must bewilder every sense; and that for the mere idle gratification of vanity,) an unfortunate passion which she could not return, which, in fact, she had already cast from her!

"My own Julia!" he exclaimed, suddenly stopping short and taking both her hands,

you really look as much condemned as if I

had brought this horrible accusation against your pure innocent self in due form; but," he added, " you must consider that when we are very miserable, we are never very just to those who cause our suffering! Weak too as I thought your conduct, its effects were too much for my strength of mind: I felt that it was dangerous to be near you. In how different a light would all that imagination thus misconstrued have appeared, could I have suspected that it was generous pity for my supposed disappointment about Lady Susan which gave that dangerous softness to your manner, unchecked by any idea that my feelings towards yourself had ever been other than those of an adopted brother. And now, Julia, it is your turn to make confessions: do tell me what crowning of all my presumption was it, of

which you suspected me when, no later than last evening, your gentle nature was, at length, provoked to say, What can you mean? What can you dare to mean?"" She appeared very unwilling to reply; he entreated her to tell him, at least, to what feelings of hers it was she thought he meant to allude. At length she stammered out, "I suppose-I thoughtI-must have thought-you meant-my-my -regard for-for yourself.”

A delighted smile grew gradually over the features of Fitz-Ullin as he bent his head, trying to follow the downcast eyes, and catch the broken accents of the speaker. "But how then," he whispered, "did you account for my not gladly, delightedly availing myself of -of-your-amiable condescension ?"

What words Julia found, or whether she found any, in her opinion, sufficiently delicate by which to express that she had understood him to have apologized more than once for

not being able to return the secret affection he had discovered her to entertain for him, we cannot exactly say, for here the scene closes. No very serious misunderstanding, however, appears to have ensued, for the lovers returned to tea with perfectly happy faces, and, during that cheerful ceremony, Edmund's delight assumed almost an extravagant cast, while Julia actually began to prefer his looking quite happy to that more humble expression of dependance on her sovereign will and pleasure for the slightest portion of his felicity, which used to gratify her so much.

The beginnings of love may be selfish, may be tyrannical, may require that vanity and thirst of power shall have due tribute paid them; but, when love is perfected, not only is vanity cast away, power and pride laid down, but self, that idol of the unoccupied heart, is forgotten, or valued only as contributing to the happiness of the being beloved! We speak,

of course, of that early sunbeam of life's morning, First Love: the description here given can never be applicable to the mixed nature of the later awakened sentiment, with its thousand necessary alloys: the selfishness called into play by self-defence, the doubts of the future, taught by experience of the past; with all the calculating insinuations of interest hinting the wisdom of training the heart's tendrils to cling to convenience.

Let the plant be love, of course, says prudence; but why not place it in the comfortable south aspect of wealth and splendour ?