two hours in the morning. Alas! that industry should not always be rewarded in this sublunary state!

A young lady was found to accompany him on the piano, and after placing himself in a resolute attitude, with his elbows above his head, and his little person inflated to twice its natural size in the anticipation of his approaching triumph, he gave the signal, by stamping his foot on the floor, and forthwith the grand opening chord was struck, and Teresa was half induced to put her hands to her ears, so utterly at variance were the two instruments. But the performers, in happy unconsciousness of this trifling circumstance, went on hammering and blowing through innumerable pages, till at length Lord Tabley turned to Teresa and said, in no very low whisper, "I wish to God this little animal would leave off his infernal puffing!"

Teresa was highly amused, and vainly attempted to retain the same gravity which was displayed in the countenances of all the other listeners; and her struggling smile encreased

into an uncontrollable laugh, when a lady on Lord Tabley's other side said to him,

"There certainly is no instrument so captivating as the flute ;-of course you are a lover of music, my lord ?-shall I introduce you to this charming amateur ?"

Lord Tabley turned sharply round, and replied, "Heaven defend me from all amateurs, connoisseurs, and professeurs!"

The lady in question happened to be all three. To Teresa's great delight, Mrs. Bolton, with her husband and sister, soon arrived at Rossfirth, and Catherine Brand had the good fortune to please Lord Tabley's fastidious taste almost as much as Teresa,

The Alexanders were extremely popular in the county, and their house became speedily the gayest and most agreeable in the neighbourhood.

The Boltons were found pleasing additions to their circle. Mrs. Bolton was a charming creature, with a frank, cordial manner and friendly ease, and quite free from that low-bred habit of eyeing people from head to foot, which many country ladies think so becoming. Her

eyes were laughing and brilliant, and her sweet smile warmed the coldest heart.

Her husband was full of life and spirits, a gay, good-humoured, thoughtless man, yet, with all his thoughtlessness, he never wounded the feelings of any human being.

Such characters as the Boltons make us forget our misanthropy, and for their sakes we almost love mankind again.

Catherine Brand continued the same as ever, giving way occasionally to fits of despondency— then rallying, and allowing her imagination to picture a brilliant future.

Teresa watched these alternations of her friend's mind with sorrow and anxiety, and she often attempted to reason with her, but Catherine would reply,

"Oh! I am too old, my dear, to change now; -I fear that such as I am, such I shall ever remain."

One day, after lamenting her inconsistency, she said,

"I often think of a governess I had when I

was very young, and of the excellent principles and precepts she strove to instil into me. Had I been blessed with such a preceptress during all the perilous period of girlhood, I might have been a very different being from what I am, and, doubtless, should have been spared many of those trials which I have brought on myself by my own ill-regulated passions,

"She was my first governess, and might have been my last, but Providence had provided better for her, and she was transplanted to a fairer world in the bloom of her days.

"Her's was an affecting story. Her father was a rich West Indian at the period of her birth, but when she was about seventeen, his property had dwindled away to nothing, and he came to England, with a large family of daughters to establish in the world, and a sickly wife to tend. But the poor wife was soon taken by death, and the girls left motherless at the very age when they most required a mother's eye. One of these girls, who had been nursed in the lap of luxury, was now bound apprentice

to a milliner, and the eldest, at the tender age of eighteen, became our governess.

"I well remember the day she arrived with her father; she doted on that dear father, and he was worthy of her attachment. It was a final parting between them, as he returned, a day or two afterwards, to the West Indies.

"She was evidently overwhelmed with grief at the separation, but performed her duties towards us in a manner extraordinary, for one so young. Never was there a better or kinder monitress. She it was who first opened my eyes to the duties of our religion, and planted those good seeds in my heart, which I trust will one day surmount the weeds that have so long checked their growth. But she never recovered the parting from her family. Her's was one of those tender natures which require to be nurtured in the paternal soil, and only ripen under the sun of kindred love; and when she was torn from the precious ties of home, when seas rolled between her and all she held dear, and a strange, unkindly climate, and still stranger, colder faces were around her, she