nor free-trade. Her eyes were fixed upon the light across the street, as it glimmered in the window at which the postmistress was sorting letters, and she could only watch that, and wonder how any one could move their hands so rapidly, and use their eyes with so much effect, as she saw that the busy little woman was doing. She thought she herself should never do to fill an office of that kind, and then she wondered what office she could fill; whether, indeed, she would ever fill any office, or would perish from the earth as if she had never been, leaving no place the more empty for her loss.

These were habitual thoughts to the orphan girl. They made no difference in her look or manner while flowing through her mind; only some good people in the village had said lately that they thought Miss Greyburn had grown to look melancholy, and some had ventured to suggest that she was not quite happy in her situation. The young man in the shop had doubtless heard these suggestions, and he looked as if he should like very much to know whether she was really so or not; so he ventured to suggest that the town had been very dull of late. "Very little stirring in it," he said. "No parties, as there used to be," with a good deal more of the same kind, without eliciting a single response.

At last Alice started from her seat. A servant-girl was running across the street from the post-office, and Alice had been the first to see her.

"What is it?" said she, holding out her hand.

"I don't know," said the girl, quite out of breath, and at the same time laying one hand upon her heart, as if she wished it to be understood that that organ was desperately at work, in some way or other. "I don't know, I really am so fluttered. There's 'Immediate' on that letter, and Missis told me to give it to you without losing a minute."

"Immediate," said Alice, taking the letter to the light of the

shop.

It was so. There was the word "Immediate," written in clear strong letters in one corner, but the hand-writing was not

that of Arthur Grahame, and Alice calmed down from her first attack of fear.

"You won't open it, then?" said the servant, who had lingered with some faint hope of hearing what was the matter. "Open it!" said Alice. "The letter is not for me," and with these words she left Mr. Johnson's shop, the young man bowing her to the door as politely as if she had purchased half the goods it contained.

The full round harvest-moon had risen before Alice set out on her way home. The lane along which she walked was thickly fringed with trees, and looked shadowy and mysterious. But she was not afraid. Her thoughts were too much occupied for that.

"Perhaps," said she to herself, "the trial is over, and this letter bears the intelligence of the result. Now, then, I shall know all. I wonder how I shall bear it. I wonder, in the changes that must follow, whether I shall keep my senses quite. If the trial has ended well I suppose they will marry. If otherwise I suppose he will go away for ever-for ever! But will he go alone? Will she let him go alone? I know who would not, so long as she had a sixpence to share with him. What folly to be talking, or even thinking, in this way! No, I am but the poor messenger between them. And now I shall have to give this letter in, and go to bed without hearing or knowing anything to bed perhaps, but not to sleep."

CHAPTER LXI.

LONG, long, did Ella sit silent and almost motionless in her own chamber on the night after receiving the letter. It was impossible to send out anything, either in the form of letter or packet, before seven in the morning. What should she do? A messenger would scarcely reach his destination sooner than a letter would by the regular mode of conveyance; and, after all, some tidings arrived soon enough, even if they travelled by the tardiest route. She would wait until the morning. Indeed she must wait, for who had she to dispatch if she wished to send a messenger. Neither did she know, at present, what she wished to send. That was a question of deeper difficulty than the means of sending. So she sat by the table in her own silent chamber, and leaned her head upon her hand, and thought.

Yes, thought; she thought, as it seemed to her, of everything in the wide world, in the space of a few short moments; of everybody's opinions, prejudices, and modes of expressing them, for such were the ideas which presented themselves first. Then she thought of a lonely, penniless, friendless young man, with finer and warmer feelings than the rest of the world-all impulse and goodness of heart. She thought of him deprived of his rightful possessions by the vilest of frauds, of no one standing by him in his downfall and depression, no mother, no sister, no friend! She thought of the triumph there would be amongst those who had always suspected and thought evil of him. She thought how he would now be borne down by the force of bad opinion, and driven away for ever. She thought of the good which had lately dawned in his character, the tenderness--but

in connexion with this, the self-abasement that would drag him down lower and lower, until-but that was a point upon which she could not think; and, yet, who would bear him up, who would befriend, who would encourage him now? There was not one amongst all who had ever known him, but herself, to whom he could look for a word of genuine kindness, or a tone of real sympathy.

And was he then to perish? This seemed the only alternative to beg for a morsel of bread, or to lie down and die by the wayside. And he, so formed for happiness, and yet, for such acuteness of anguish when he did suffer. He, so formed for enjoyment, that when a cloud did overspread his countenance, it was like the blackness of despair casting his whole life into shadow. To what point would his bark steer now? What harbour of safety or of peace was there for him in the wide ocean of life? And the good which had been so lately cherished in his soul, what would become of that? Must all be wrecked in one dire ruin; must body and spirit both go down, and be lost -irrecoverably lost? Those beautiful dawnings of a better life -must all be quenched in darkness? The flowers of precious promise which she had watered with her tears, must they be trampled down, without a single hand to cherish or sustain them? Those heart-communings in which she had so deeply shared, must they remain for ever silent now?

Amidst all this confusion of ideas, so many of strongly suggestive tendency, of farther, and deeper reflection, Ella thought of herself. Under what circumstances will not woman think of herself? She thought of herself, and her own lot in life, of the emptiness of her present enjoyments, of the little real value that she was to any one, or rather that she was to all the world, except to one solitary individual. It might be humbling to her vanity, but it suited her purpose now, to see that of no one else could it be said, that they really loved her, or that her existence was of any importance to them. No, if she should die that very night, there would scarcely be a tear shed over her grave. The means of subsistence which she afforded to some might certainly

be missed, but she questioned, whether as a whole, it would not be better and happier for them to seek it for themselves.

Strange thoughts! And yet they came, and came, like waves upon the shore, one following in upon another before it has had time to recede, and so gathering strength, and swelling all the same way, until their force becomes almost irresistible, and every stray weed and loosened rock that might oppose them is drawn in by their united power, and merged in the great abyss of waters. With the dim shadowy night around her, Ella nursed these thoughts. Whence they came, and what they tended to, she never asked. They were there, around, above, beneath her, everywhere—closing in her very being, and shutting out every other thought that might have entered within the atmosphere of her mind. There was a feverish haste and tumult about them, too. They hurried on towards some conclusion. They told her that she stood alone in the world, independent, selfsupported, and consequently that she had a right to will and to act as she liked, without being amenable to any earthly judge. If any one should choose to suspect her motives, or condemn her actions, what was that to her? She could appeal—she thought she could appeal, to the Allseeing eye, whether her motives were not pure, unselfish, generous, and good. She thought she was desiring only to be led aright, to do and to be what was most likely to be conducive to the benefit of others. But did she ask, in solemn and earnest communion with God, to be directed in all she did to what was essentially right in itself?

Ah! this was the question which the dark night was asking silently; which the stars, so true to their appointed course, were asking, as they shone above her; which the wide dumb world was asking in its solemn sleep; which the dews were asking as they fell, and every flower, and leaf, and all the host of nature's attributes, and every moving atom of the universal whole, was asking, while it obeyed the eternal and omnipotent law of its creation; all, in that silent hour, were asking of her weak woman's heart, whether she also knew not a holier, a more omnipotent law than she was then consulting? All were telling