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is well for me that my peace of mind should be secured from further danger by this salutary, although painful removal."

The next day I received a letter from Sir Francis, containing a proposal of marriage: this was the crowning point of my wishes. Had he made me a verbal offer, my word might have been doubted when I felt inclined to boast of it, for the word of a coquette is with good reason deemed of very slight value; but a letter was something tangible; I might convince in a moment the most sceptical damsel in the county that the hand and heart of the invulnerable Sir Francis Egerton, and, "last not least," the command of his income of eight thousand a year, with a carte blanche as to settlements, had been placed at my disposal. I instantly showed the letter to my father and mother, and they fully joined in my triumph; but I had little anticipated the painful scene of domestic contention to which it was to lead. I had never for a moment doubted what answer to return to the proposal of Sir Francis; it was my fixed resolution to refuse it; I had no wish to be married; coquetry was my favourite pursuit ; and, as I had never travelled on the Continent, I did not imagine that, as a married woman, I should be permitted to retain it. At all events, I only regarded matrimony as the distant spire, terminating a long series of love affairs, desirable to think of perhaps ten or twelve years hence, but never to be taken into serious consideration on the sunny side of thirty. My parents thought very differently; they had sanctioned my early flirtations and subsequent coquetries with the idea that they would eventually lead to the introduction of a son-in-law, who would be able, like Jupiter, to pay his court in a shower of gold; and, when I put the letter of Sir Francis Egerton into their hands, the large stock of affection which they kept by them ready-made for the service of any single gentleman proposing to their daughter, immediately broke forth in unqualified expressions of admiration and delight at the numerous excellencies of the one in question; and my father talked of writing to his lawyer, and my mother of writing to her milliner, before I had time to say that I intended to send a refusal to Sir Francis. When at length I contrived to make them understand that I was in earnest, which I had some difficulty in doing, I was fain to bow my head like a weeping willow beneath the storm of their displeasure. "Do you really expect a more eligible offer?" asked my mother.

Juliet; he then raised his voice, and did what many gentlemen would do under like circumstances, i. e., addressed some angry observations to my mother on her folly in having spoiled me from my childhood, and thereby rendered me obstinate, rebellious. and blind to my own good; and my mother did what most ladies would do who were thus attacked; she first denied the accusation, then retorted it, and finally left the room in tears.

"You ought to be made aware, Olivia," said my father, with more calmness than he had hitherto evinced, "of the importance of your forming an eligible connexion. I have never alluded to the source of my riches, for it is not very pleasant for a man to derive the chief part of his property from his wife; and the delicacy and feeling of your mother have prevented her from mentioning the subject to you; but the fact is, that my paternal fortune was very small; your mother was a young, wealthy, and childless widow; the large property of her late husband was not to be taken from her if she formed a second alliance, but was to revert to his family in case of her death. I have lived up to my income, and have not been able to make any provision for my children. Your brother has received an excellent education, and I trust will meet with success in the medical profession; but for you, Olivia, there is no way of establishment but by marriage. Your mother's health is declining, and her medical attendants have pronounced that excitement and irritation would be likely to have a most injurious effect on her constitution. You have done your best to-day to produce them; let me have the satisfaction of hearing you confess your fault, and let me be the bearer of a favourable answer from you to Sir Francis."

I was very little disconcerted by my father's information. I felt assured that I should always be able to command an eligible offer, and that if I were really called to the trial of losing my mother, it would then be quite time enough to accept the addresses of a suitor. I persisted in my intention of refusing Sir Francis, and the letter containing the fatal "No" was dispatched to his residence. The next day I received a letter from Louisa Egerton, which almost touched even a heart hard and cold as mine. She did not reproach me; she imagined that some misunderstanding must have influenced me; that some one must have prejudiced me against her brother, or that perhaps I did not feel fully aware of her own eagerness to welcome me in the character of a sister, and she implored me to mention my objections, which she felt convinced might be removed. I did not send any reply, and our intercourse consequently ceased. I showed the proposal of Sir Francis to several of my female friends, but it gained me more censure than admiration; he had alluded in it to the short dialogue which I had held with his sister previous to my return home, in which I begged her not to delude me with false hopes, and sugin-gested that a letter might be addressed to me in my father's house; and it was thus rendered tolerably evident to the readers of this precious

"I have no idea that I shall ever meet with one half so eligible," I replied quietly.

"I would not wish you to sacrifice yourself for money," said my father; "but tell me, is there anything in Sir Francis Egerton's manners, temper, or character, on which you can ground a reasonable objection?"

Nothing in the world," I replied; "but I have no wish to be married at present."

My father muttered some expressions wardly, which sounded to me very like those employed by old Capulet in his reproof of

document that I had taken unwarrantable and ' attentions of her little solitary servant. I had ungenerous means to allure the writer of it. Such, Janet, is the history of my first passage of coquetry; it was eminently successful, and I was rewarded for it by the loss of the good opinion of a worthy man, and of the friendship of an amiable girl, by the blame of my neighbours and the displeasure of my parents. All these I bore very well except the last; but day after day to be in the situation of Jeannie Gray

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may be very poetical and very picturesque, but it is exceedingly disagreeable. I was constantly repelled with gloomy looks and short answers, very seldom talked to, and very often talked at; and I felt so extremely desirous to get away from home that I was unfeignedly delighted when I received an invitation to do so, although in my brighter hours I should have contemptuously rejected one of so humble a description.

My mother's first cousin had about five-andtwenty years ago married a young man of small fortune of the name of Compton, who died two years after their union, leaving her with an infant daughter and a scanty income. Mrs. Compton was scarcely able to afford food and raiment for herself and her child, and it was only by the contributions of her friends that she was enabled to bestow upon Hester the advantages of a good education. At the age of eighteen Hester was an accomplished and well-informed girl, and her prudent benefactresses hinted to her mother that she was quite qualified to earn her own living as a governess. The heart of the fond mother revolted from the idea of thus parting with her only child; nor could Hester support the thought of quitting her feeble and ailing mother; neither of them, however, could brook the humiliation of being indebted for their subsistence to unwilling charity; and at length all difficulties were removed by Hester's proposal of going out as a daily governess. If the resident governess have trials (and who can deny that she has many), those of the daily governess are more numerous and irritating; to be the slave of a dozen families must be worse than to be the slave of one; and the families educating their children in such a manner are usually of lower grade than those who receive a governess into their house, and consequently are less likely to regard or to understand her feelings. Poor Hester, who was really zealous and anxious to oblige and to benefit her pupils, was constantly exposed to the indignant wonder of their parents that she could not bring them on faster in their studies; and when she returned from her round of comfortless visits to her sickly mother's small and scantily furnished house in Camden Town, there was little to exhilarate her spirits save the conciousness that she was performing her duty, and tending to render the life of her parent more easy and cheerful than it could have been had she been consigned entirely to the society and

a

very rarely vouchsafed to pay a visit to Mrs. Compton, and when I did I felt more inclined to be amused at the recital of Hester's troubles than to sympathize with them. On one occasion I remember she told me, that having seen symptoms of a poetical genius in one of her pupils, she encouraged her to write some verses, which were handed about the Camden Town coteries by the happy mamma of the juvenile Sappho with unfeigned exultation and indefatigable perseverance. Unfortunately, however, one of the ladies favoured with a sight of these productions, had a daughter who was also under the tuition of Hester.

"I think it very strange, Miss Compton," she indignantly said on Hester's next visit, "that Euphemia Dobson should write such beautiful verses, while my daughter, who has been under your care six months longer, cannot so much as string together a couplet.'

Hester attempted to vindicate herself by saying that poetic talent was not to be taught; but the angry matron resembled the lady who, when told that her daughter wanted a capacity for music, rejoined, "Then get her one directly, whatever the expense may be ;" and her only comment on Hester's observation was, that "If Miss Compton chose to charge extra for teaching poetry, she had no objection to pay anything in reason."

Hester attempted to wake the dormant spark of poesy in the young lady's mental organization, but it resisted her efforts; and Euphemia Dobson, just about that time achieving a regular sonnet on the death of a canary bird, Hester received a prompt dismissal from the mother of her anti-poetical pupil.

Poor Hester's only gaieties consisted in the invitations that she received to parties given by the parents of her pupils, and these invitations came in particular abundance at Christmas, for Miss Compton was an excellent country dance player (quadrilles had not then made their way to Camden Town), and obviated the necessity of either paying a professional performer or fixing an unwilling amateur young lady at the piano, who was panting all the time to join the dancers. It was never surmised that Hester could feel any inclination of the kind, or any weariness at sitting confined for three or four hours to her post-she was "only the daily governess." These parties, however, she feared to refuse to join, for her scanty subsistence depended on the caprice of those who gave them; therefore she patiently and calmly arrayed herself twice or thrice a-week during the Christmas vacation in white muslin, braided her hair over her forehead (which, although now very generally done, made quite a sad and sober distinction at that time), and proceeded to the scene of festivity, sitting in the middle of a formal circle till tea was ended, when the announcement of the lady of the house, "Miss Compton, the country dances are going to begin," informed her that it was expected she should walk to the piano, which she contrived to do unassisted by the sustaining arm of any

of

the Camden Town beaux. Her labours were refreshed by an occasional glass of lemonade or wak negus, and enlivened by the request of furtive stragglers that she would play quicker, bader, or softer; for Camden Town did not abound in finished dancers, aud the disagreements between the time of the player and the steps that responded to it were of very frequent occurrence. When the dancing concluded Hester always modestly took her leave, neither expecting nor receiving an invitation to share the petit souper which always closed the entertainment: and the lady of the revels usually said in an audible whisper to one of her friends just as she was departing, "Poor Hester Compton! what a delightful evening this has been for her! I like to give pleasure to a well-conducted young person; there can be no reason why she should not partake of a few enjoyments, although only a daily governess."

There was one house, however, where Hester was treated with more consideration by her hostess: she was the mother of the juvenile poetess, and was so elated by Hester's appreciation of her daughter's talents, that she always received her with pleasure, merely asked her to play country dances in turn with other young ladies, introduced her to partners, insisted on her staying supper, and finally sent her home under the guardianship of a diminutive footboy, about a head and shoulders shorter than herself. One evening Hester was introduced by her to Mr. Luttrell, a young man who had just come into a handsome property by the death of a father, who had kept him in great thraldom and subservience; he was evidently struck with Hester's appearance and manners, danced with her during the greater part of the evening, sat by her at supper, and usurped the place of the diminutive foot-boy as her escort home. The next day he called on Mrs. Dobson, and made many inquiries respecting Miss Compton; they were answered with truth and good nature; he found that she was well connected and well educated, and the want of money was no objection in his eyes. He prevailed on his fair friend to accompany him to pay a morning visit to his partner of the preceding night; he ventured to repeat the visit without her sanction, and in a short time offered his hand to Hester, and was

accepted.

and her tenderness and kindness of heart. The postman passed by her door without knocking on Valentine's day, and her glove had never been stolen or her fan detained prisoner in the course of her life. It is not then to be wondered at that both gratitude and inclination led Hester willingly to accept the addresses of Mr. Luttrell, who was agreeable in person, remarkably goodnatured, and was warmly and disinterestedly enamoured of herself. His fifteen hundred a-year appeared to her unsophisticated mind boundless riches; his readiness to take a house in any situation she might fix on, the height of human trust; his anxiety that her mother should still continue to reside with her, the extreme of human benevolence. Mrs. Compton also most joyfully congratulated her daughter and herself on this happy change in their affairs, all which she imputed to the filial piety of Hester, which she was always sure would meet with an appropriate reward, although she had not exactly embodied that reward in the shape of a wealthy young husband.

Poor Hester had been a daily governess long enough to value her charms and talents much as her employers seemed to value them, and Mrs. Compton had never been addicted to the usual castle-building of mothers possessed of pretty daughters. Hester had been educated on the charity of friends; she had derived her subsistence in womanhood from the patronage of strangers; she was now more than three-andtwenty, and care and anxiety had already somewhat faded the young roses of her cheek, and dimmed the sparkling lustre of her eye. Hester was too refined for the admiration of the vulgar, | and was placed in too lowly a circle to encounter those men who could really value her innate elegance of inind, her sweetness of manners,

All these particulars were written to me by Hester, who humbly and gratefully expressed her sense of her own unworthiness of the blessings in store for her.

"I am however so ambitious," she continued, "that I want yet another drop to be added to my already overflowing cup of happiness; do not refuse, dear Olivia, to gratify my mother and myself by staying a few days with us; it will be actual charity on your part, for I have to perform the difficult task of choosing clothes for myself and furniture for my new house, and I am so utterly inexperienced in these matters, so unused to any purchases of greater moment than a simple straw bonnet or muslin window-curtain, that I fear I shall excite the ridicule of my upholsterer and the horror of my milliner, if I visit them unaccompanied by some one who, like yourself, is versed in the mysteries of their craft."

I accepted the invitation, quitted home with much pleasure, and arrived at Camden Town determined to be on my best behaviour, and to be pleased with everybody and everything. Hester introduced me to her lover; he was a simple-looking young man, with blue eyes, a pink-and-white complexion, a very gay waistcoat and a very fine watch-chain; he seldom spoke without laughing, not so much from any vivacity of temperament as from a wish to appear perfectly at his ease in society, which in reality he was very far from being; for his father, who was nervous, sickly, and selfish, had immured him in almost constant retirement, and he had somewhat the feeling of a caged bird suddenly let loose amongst its free and happy brethren. His expectations had evidently been highly raised respecting me, for he looked on me while I was taking off my bonnet and shawl as if he were gazing on a "bright particular star." I, on my part, was equally courteous; and when Hester, the first moment she was alone with me, eagerly asked how I liked Luttrell, I replied with great animation, "He seems to be a most amiable, ex

cellent young man"-an answer which she received with perfect satisfaction, without waiting to think how a man could possibly seem to be "most amiable and excellent" while merely saying "It is a fine day for the season," and "I hope you are not much fatigued by your journey."

Before the close of the next day I began to grow tired of my visit. I passed the morning pleasantly enough shopping with Hester. Dinner was rather a trial, for it was badly served, and not particularly well cooked; but the long winter evening was the acme of stupidity. The drawing room in Camden Town was about the size of my dressing-room at home, the ceiling was low, the mantel-piece was high, the lookingglass was small, and there were no chandeliers, no ottomans, no tables covered with gaily bound books and engravings. Mrs. Compton lay all the evening reclining on a faded green cotton sofa; Hester sat opposite hemming muslin, with an imitation tortoiseshell work-box before her; and the admiring and enamoured Luttrell by her side, sometimes holding a skein of silk for her to wind, sometimes whispering in her ear, and sometimes re-adjusting her needles and pins in fantastic forms in their appropriate receptacles. I felt myself a cipher; I had never been accustomed to be so, and I determined that I would no longer remain in my unwonted state of insignificance.

I resolved on the plan of dazzling and overwhelming the weak-minded Luttrell, and cir cumventing the artless and simple Hester in his affections. You may well start, Janet; you cannot blame me more severely than I now blame myself for my heartless and contemptible vanity. The next morning we were again busied in outdoor excursions, and in the evening I asked Hester to play and sing. She complied; she had a correct knowledge of music, but her execution was far from brilliant, and her voice was of small and feeble compass. I succeeded her at the piano, and determined on electrifying my hearers by "The Mocking Bird," then a fashionable and very showy song, to which the power and flexibility of my voice enabled me to do ample justice. After they had sufficiently exhausted their expressions of delight, I sang a difficult Italian cavatina. Italian singing was not so common then as it is now, at all events it was not common to my present audience; they pressed me for another and another air, and even poor dozing Mrs. Compton sat more than half upright on the sofa and said, "This puts me in mind of my youthful days; it is quite like being at the opera-house." Luttrell had for some time stationed himself by my side at the piano, and as I found that Italian songs, however they might surprise him, were not so much to his taste of those of a humbler grade, I sang" Love has eyes," "Love among the roses," and other songs of a similar class for some time, and then resuming my seat at the table, entered into a lively conversation on various subjects, repeating many anecdotes, which, although hackneyed in general society, were quite new to the very

unworldly trio with whom I was domesticated Luttrell did not take leave till a late hour, and Mrs. Compton said to me when she made her own exit, "Thank you for your amusing ane dotes, Olivia; you have kept us all alive this evening." Hester said nothing; but she eridently from her looks thought a great des although her thoughts touching my good spir and amusing anecdotes were not, I surmised, s favourable as those of her mother and lover the same subject.

The ensuing morning I made a point of pr curing a trashy song ("Sweet Rosabel" I think it was called), which Luttrell had lauded in hig terms the preceding day. I sang it to him whe the evening came, complimenting him upon the taste displayed in his selection of it, and assuring him that I had got it in full reliance on h judgment. I was obliged to sing it three times, and the evening passed with much apparen cheerfulness; the only damp to which was the Mrs. Compton twice said to Hester, “I am sure, my dear, you are not well; how pale you look and you scarcely speak a word.”

The weak-minded and inconstant Luttrell hat shown such evident indications of preference wards me that evening, that I determined the next day to fix him my own by all the speser of gay attire. I had provided myse gala dress in case any invitation should necessary to me, and I wore it on the occasion, knowing perfectly well that decided mark of bad taste to be finely dresse a small domestic circle; but aware that note of my companions would find it out, or suspert of doing anything that in the remotest could militate against the laws of fashion was then just twenty, in the full bloom and of youthful beauty, and of that majestic and commanding style of person which is enhanced by studied dress, and it was perceptible that new admirer was as much overcome as I wished him to be by my appearance. "Your cons looks like the good genius in a fairy-tale," he whispered to Hester. She did not reply; she probably thought, and with justice, that I muc more resembled an evil genius than a good one I contrived that evening to mention to Luttre while he was standing close to me at the pian that I intended at twelve the next day to practise some new songs which I had just purchased Little gifted with sagacity as he was, he cou not misunderstand so palpable an assignation, He called at the time appointed, and found me. as I expected to be, alone. Mrs. Compton seldom left her room before one, and Hester was absent. She had given up her circle of day pupils immediately after her acceptance of Lu trell's offer; but to one of them, the daughter of the lady who had introduced her to her lover, she still from gratitude paid occasional visits. I soon left off singing to Luttrell, and began talking sentiment to him. I bestowed some faint praise upon Hester, but lamented her coldness and apathy of disposition; wondered that he could have chosen one so different from himself, and then appeared alarmed at my ow

words, and anxious to recall them. The train was previously laid, and the heart of my admirer caught fire; he stammered out a brief confession of his inconstancy to Hester, and an arowal of his passion for me. I was not inclined to shorten the term of my amusement by declining his addresses, therefore affecting great confusion, I uttered a few words of mingled surprise, pleasure, and apprehension, and then pretending that I had promised to visit Mrs. Compton at that hour, disappeared, and did not again join him till Hester's return. That evening Luttrell, by his own desire, sang second to me in several duets: his voice was weak and poor, and his enunciation defective; he was generally out of time and always out of tune; but the duets he selected were all of the most tender description, and I praised and encouraged his performance. He contrived to put a letter in my hand as I was leaving the piano, and I was contemptible enough to receive and secret it. The contents were just what might be expected; bombastic professions of adoration, allusions to my kind encouragement of his attentions, declarations of anxiety to break off his engagement with Hester, and entreaties that I would let my acceptance of his proposal (of which he did not seem to entertain a doubt) be prompt and decisive. I did not answer this letter, but I did not become cool in my manner towards him in consequence of it, and when he obtained the opportunity of addressing a few words in private to me, I told him with much truth that I did not consider a favourable time had yet presented itself for a development of his change of feelings. The development, however, was to take place much sooner than I had anticipated.

(To be concluded in our next.)

OH, SING THOSE FAIRY NUMBERS.

BY S. J. G.

Oh, sing those fairy numbers,
Oh, sing them once again;
For whilst thou singest, slumbers
This poor heart's wearing pain.

Well may I love them, dearest,
For memories sweet they bring
Of all to my heart nearest-

Oh, sing them, dearest, sing!

And I will close my eyes, love,

And drink in each dear note As it comes forth and dies, love, From thy melodious throat.

Oh, I could list for ever,

Ás thou dost sing that song; Oh, that a thousand echoes

Might every word prolong!

For it soothes wild sorrow's madness,

That strain of other days;

It steals away the sadness

That on my spirit weighs.

And many a sunny thought, love,
Of things forgotten long,
Is back to my heart brought, love,
By that sweet simple song.

The daisy meads of childhood,
The chasing of the bee,
The ramble in the wild wood,
The race upon the lea.

The happy household faces

That gathered round the hearth, How clearly memory traces

Those slumberers in the earth!

My mother sung that song, love, My lullaby it made;

And I heard it when a child, love, Beside her knee I played.

And oft when sunlight faded, And twilight's silver grey The earth all dewy shaded, My sister sung that lay.

Oh, every word is teeming

With magic spells, that raise Dear eyes upon me beaming, And thoughts of other days.

Then sing those fairy numbers,

Oh, sing them once again; For whilst thou singest, slumbers This poor heart's wearing pain.

REMINISCENCES.

BY W. G. J. BARKER, ESQ.

Letters and flowers are lying before her, Written and gather'd by hands that are dear; Heavily sigheth she, bending o'er them,

Swims in her fine eye a sorrowful tear. Dim burn the tapers as if they were dying, Fast glide the moments that slumber require; All uncounted those moments are flying, All unheeded the lights may expire.

Not in the chamber where lonely she sitteth, Not to the present her thoughts are confined, But in the past she is inwardly living,

Gazing on tokens the lost left behind. These were penned in her love's bright dawning, Those were culled when her hopes were new Tempests have swept o'er the sunny morning, Hearts proved false that were fancied true.

How are they sullied-is it with keeping
Years have departed since first they were read;
How are they wither'd-is it with weeping?
Many a tear on their leaves has been shed.
Still will she treasure the carefully cherish'd,
Now that her heart is left desolate here,
Speaking of hopes and of happiness perish'd,
Relics of those who though faithless are dear.
Banks of the Yore.

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