By degrees, the faint colour streaked again her delicate cheek, and the long, heavy eyelashes rose languidly, partially unveiling the dark eyes beneath, and the warm breath came from the full parted lips, and fanned Sedley's forehead, as he bent over her face. Intuitively he arose from his recumbent posture, feeling, that with returning sense in the object of his solicitude, must also return the impenetrable veil he had thrown over his feelings.

Teresa's recollection returned fully, and with it came the remembrance of Sedley's inestimable service to her. In the first impulse of her gratitude, and in the confusion of her intellect, she stretched out her arms towards Sedley, and an expression of more than mortal beauty, which gave him a glimpse of what her love might be, irradiated her countenance; but speedily the arms were withdrawn, and the glow faded from her features, and her eyes were cast down in painful confusion. The thanks she then offered to Sedley were cold and brief; but no coldness, no after-caution could efface from

his memory that one look she would have given worlds to recal.

Teresa's next object was her child; and the little girl, whose clamorous grief had ceased, and whose tears still stood on her cheeks, motioned them to follow her, and took the direction of the cottage. They accompanied her, Sedley carrying the infant, and Teresa leaning on the nurse, who was striving to account for her carelessness by saying, that the child had suddenly sprung from her arms, attracted by the sunshine in the lake.

At length they reached the cottage door, and the little girl knocked gently at it. It offered a most dreary appearance. One small casement alone admitted the light, and even in that, most of the panes of glass were broken, and the gaps stuffed with straw or paper; no smoke issued from the solitary chimney, and the discoloured thatch had fallen off in many places, leaving the rafters exposed to view. The door was broken and moss-grown, and the little garden before it filled with rank weeds, mingled with a few coarse vegetables. Teresa's heart was moved at

the air of extreme desolation and poverty, thus defacing the beautiful scenery around.

After some delay, the door was slowly and cautiously opened, and a young man, pale, and ragged in his attire, stood before them. The little girl uttered some sounds, unintelligible to the party outside, accompanied by numerous signs and gesticulations, upon which the young man invited them round to a back door, and led them into a small kitchen, with a miserable bed in one corner. The little girl then kindled a fire on the hearth, and warmth was quickly imparted to Teresa's infant, which, after some time, fell into a refreshing sleep in its nurse's arms,

Sedley then took leave of Teresa, not venturing to breathe a hint of the dreadful scene he had so lately witnessed, and Teresa asked the little girl, who had resumed her sobbing, though less audibly, the cause of her affliction. The child did not answer her, but, taking her by the hand, she led her gently into an adjoining room, which offered a spectacle of more wretchedness, if possible, than the exterior of the cottage.

The earthen floor was uneven, and covered with rubbish and fragments of decaying vegetables; the large, cheerless hearth was empty, and the walls broken, and stained by the rain, which came in at the roof in plentiful streams during wet weather.

The furniture of the apartment consisted of two broken chairs and a table, and against the window stood a bed, covered with old and filthy rags.

On that bed lay a poor woman, apparently in the agonies of death; but the anguish expressed in her upturned eyes spoke of more than mere bodily suffering. A fierce, red spot burned on each shrunken cheek, and her sallow, wasted arms rested on the heads of two kneeling figures, who wept on each side of the bed. One of these mourners was the young man who had admitted the strangers into the cottage, and though clothed in tatters, and wasted with sorrow, there was something peculiarly interesting and beyond the common herd in his appearance. His hair was long and dark, and fell in tangled masses on each

side of his face; his eyes were light gray, and a fixed despair reigned in them. His features were handsome, though pale and attenuated, and his age seemed about twenty-six years.

His thin fingers clasped the hand which hung over his neck, and ever and anon pressed it convulsively, whilst his lips moved in prayer.

The other figure was that of a young woman, a fragile, delicate creature, scarcely seventeen, who looked as though an unkind look or harsh tone would have power to kill her. Her soft blue eyes were fixed, in mournful earnestness, on the face of the youth opposite to her, and her whole soul was in their gaze. There was more than sorrow in their expression ;-anxiety, fear, and deep tenderness were mingled in their scrutiny.

Teresa was deeply affected by this scene, and would have retired, but the little girl pulled her into the room, and then, motioning for her to kneel also, she joined the melancholy group at the bedside. Teresa, unobserved by the mourners or the dying woman, knelt at the