the grass;-lastly, as starting up, and walking, in a hurried manner, out of his view. And, while describing this singular mode of action, the narrator threw in divers faithful touches, by way of illustration :

"Here she went,"-putting himself into a solemn attitude, and turning up his eyes. "Wow, wow, wow!" throwing his face into a pensive cast, moving his lips, and emitting sounds intended to denote that the voice, without words, had alone reached his ear. Anon, he walked forward. "This yallow patthern on the carpet is the river, I'm supposin', Miss Eliza ;" and he looked down with a ludicrous melancholy of visage; then he dropped on his knee, sprang up, paced quickly to the door, turned round, and bowed, as actors do ere the curtain falls. "That's the very way it was, Miss Eliza. And don't you call them cracked capers ?"

Eliza, though really troubled that her friend's eccentricities should so soon be made subject of remark for the very domestics, had with difficulty kept her countenance during Reily's narrative of the morning. Nevertheless, she succeeded in putting on, at its close, an air of grave and deep displeasure.

had to

"Now, Sir, listen to me," she said, "I have allowed you to run on only because I wished to ascertain how far what you tell might excuse the opinion you presumed to form and express with regard to a lady who is my guest. It was impertinent of you to follow her this morning that you might observe her actions. Impertinent to comment upon them as you have done-and to me. Mark what I say. If to any other person I find that you thus disrespectfully mention the name of Miss St. John,-notwithstanding even the good service which won you your present place,-I will immediately apply to Sir Thomas to have you dismissed. Now go!"

Reily made his penitent bow and exit; not one whit cast down by the rebuke.

"Devil a concarn it is of mine," he soliloquized, as he crossed the hall. “All Tim Reily has a right to be on the watch for, is to take good care she doesn't get nigh enough to bite him. An' I don't think I'll let her. She couldn't come round that, barrin' she was mighty sweet on me, aforehand, as I'm told them cracked people sometimes pretends to be for their own ends. And though she is a fine lady, there's no denyin' it, she is cracked, whatever Miss Eliza may think; an' there's no knowin' what she might be up to. But I'm on my guard. She'll never get nigh me. An', by the hockey, we have one to come nigh us that'll never bite or offer to snap at

us, so we have!" And with a caper elicited by the thought, he danced down to the kitchen to enquire-" What's the rason Peggy made the noise so early that mornin'?"

CHAPTER V.

SHORTLY after Reily's disappearance from the breakfast parlour, Eliza saw Belinda and her father coming up the avenue. At nearer approach, Belinda's face seemed much more than on the previous night, to wear the likeness it had borne in days gone by. Deep sadness, rather than high and strange excitement, was now its prevailing expression; and her jet-black eye, though still alight with a portion of its recent meaning, was less lurid in its depths than she had last seen it. "Perhaps,” thought Eliza, “the softening influence of nature has relieved my poor friend, by calling forth some weeping bursts of passion."

Sir William Judkin had now been some days from home. At parting from Eliza he had named a time for returning, but came not as punctually as was usual with him. Our heroine was anxious for his arrival. Apart from the pleasure of seeing him, great in anticipation as that was, she wished that Belinda might judge, from his presence, what little ground appeared for her fears of his constancy and honour. Eliza also longed to have her admit that Sir William was, in every respect, worthy of a lady's love, or, according to Malvolio, "worth a lady's eye."

A very slight hint served to send Nanny the Knitter, to inquire the cause of his absence. He could not return for another week. Particular business, connected, in fact, with the arrangement of part of his late uncle's embarrassments, unavoidably detained him.

During this listless pause, although Eliza and Belinda took many walks together, they were not so frequently in each other's company as they had been at school. The visitor seemed to prefer solitary rambles, and when confined to the house, generally, excepting at meal-times, sat alone in her chamber. Eliza's spirits grew saddened and depressed. Her lover's absence, and the morbid shadow thrown round her by her friend's melancholy, jointly produced the effect. For, since their conversation upon the night of her arrival at Hartley Court, deep melancholy and reserve, instead of her first

agitating vehemence, continued to characterize Belinda. That singular conversation was not resumed. Eliza sought not its renewal, and her friend never by a single word alluded to it.

For some days beyond a week, Belinda St. John had been at Hartley Court, without bringing joy or gratification to her youthful companion, or without making a friend around her. At Tim Reily's showing, notwithstanding his mistress's orders and caution, the servants deemed her "flighty," or "cracked." Waving this opinion, the meanest among them revolted at her unbending, imperious coldness. She was attended by them merely as their master's guest, without any inclination to do her a kindness.

Sir Thomas Hartley still conversed with her on topics generally supposed out of the range of those with which it is sought to entertain a young lady. But her rayless gloom of manner had evidently destroyed his first interest. Miss Alice absolutely dreaded her stern brow: it made the amiable old lady wince, she knew not why. It must be supposed, that all this could not escape the observation of the person most interested. Yet, she did not seem to notice any thing. She was always wrapped up in herself, or, to the exclusion of every exterior interest, employed with her own thoughts.

Upon the eleventh night of her visit, (Eliza remembered it well.) our heroine had retired to her chamber, when Nanny the Knitter sent up, from the kitchen, a respectful request to be permitted an audience. The boom was granted. With many duckings, and much dusting of her feet with the tail of her cloak, the old woman entered the chamber, and, as if conscious that nothing appertaining to, or at all bringing to mind the other sex, should presume to appear there, she took off and left outside the door her foxy masculine hat.

"Sit down, Nanny; you look tired," said Eliza.

"Thankee kindly, Miss Eliza, my honey. Wid your purty lave, I'll just plank myself on my hunkers, the way I'm in the fashion o' doin', and the way that's most fitther for my sort, in the same room wid one o' the quality."

Eliza concluded, from Nanny's face, that she had something of importance to communicate. But even Nanny's preparatory proceedings would have intimated as much. After having "planked herself on her hunkers," she deliberately took out her knitting apparatus, which, with her, in every presence, and under every circumstance, was as necessary a preliminary to chat, as were his few inches of thread to the forensic orator mentioned in the

E

"Spectator." If he could not properly twist the thread of hi plain cause without simultaneously twisting his pack-thread, Nanny also, should be permitted to knit her stockings and her narrative together.

With ominous rapidity, Eliza's thoughts flew from Nanny's solemn preparation, and her mysterious countenance, to Belinda's prognostic that her love would prove unfortunate. Fearful that the question might produce the mention of Sir William's name in some way distressing or dishonouring to herself, she dreaded to demand Nanny's business. At length Nanny broke silence.

"What I have to say, Miss Eliza, my pet, had be betther tould betwixt yourself an' myself. An' so, you may all as well send the good little girl to her bed."

"Why, Nanny, this is a solemn and formal preface you make. What can be the matter? Does it relate to me?"

"It does, an' it doesn't, my honey pet; an' there's every word o' the thruth for you. Don't let it bother you-now," after she had momentarily contemplated Eliza's features-"there's nothin' in it about your Father, Sir Thomas, the blessins on him. Or about Square Talbot, that we wish well, though we want no more rubbins wid him. Or about Sir William, the darlin' of a boy. Not a word in the world. It's all about women: an' the most about one sart'n woman, or lady-I don't know which is the right name to call her."

As soon as, in her own way, Nanny had come to the name she knew Eliza thought of, that young lady felt much relieved. And now she rang her bell; told her maid, who appeared in answer to it, that she could dispense with her for the night,-Nanny was going to tell her a story; and, as it grew late, the girl need not remain up. Accordingly, Nanny and her protegée continued alone, without fear of interruption.

"An' now, Miss Eliza, my honey, would it be in coorse o' manners to ax what kind of a lady she is that come to see you, here, in your good Father's house?"

"First-why do you put such a question, Nanny ?" asked Eliza, in mingled surprise and perturbation.

"Faix, an' indeed, my honey pet, I have a good rason to ax you, the rason I have isn't out o' curosity, but all out of love an' duty to your pretty sef. The same I'm in duty bound to have. But-first,it's what I'd want is to know if you're sart'n sure of the sort she is ?"

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Well, Nanny, to indulge your good wishes towards me, and while I am convinced you would not lightly intrude on this occa

sion, I admit that I know little more of Miss St. John than that she has been my school-acquaintance, and friend,—and always supposed to be of high birth and blood. Farther-though her manners certainly bear out the last fact-I, to this hour, know nothing.” "That's not the thing I was for axin', Miss Eliza, my honey." "What, then, did your question import ?"

"May I never do an ill turn, this holy an' blessed night,"Nanny bent over her knitting, and spoke in a very low whisper"but she's either moon-sthruck then, or, I'm afraid, mad, out-an'out—or else, don't be angry, my pet-ould Nanny wouldn't speak without rason—a bould woman. Lord keep us from cratures o' the kind, an' from all evil doins!"

"Take care, Nanny! The young lady is my friend-is in my Father's house. You astonish me-shock me!"

"Oh, faix, an' as I'm a lump of a sinner, Miss Eliza, my honey, blessed be the Holy Name! that's the way I was in, my own sef, wid what I seen, on the head of it."

"Tell your story, Nanny. But, remember, carefully and faithfully."

"That I mayn't sin, Miss Eliza, but you'll have it, as thrue an' as clane as if I was on my marrow-bones fornent the priest.

"It was ere-a-last night, my pet,-an' sure that was the last night o' the month, of all nights in the year,—I was at Andy Maher's wake, rest his poor sowl!"—

"Nanny, you seem determined to try my patience," broke in Eliza, too disturbed to be a patient listener.

"Ntchu, ntchu"-(we cannot find better orthography for the smack of Nanny's tongue against her palate).

"Ntchu, Ntchu,-och, sure there's nothin' farther from my thoughts, Miss Eliza, my honey, as in duty bound to you and yours, an' to yoursef, above all. Bud, my ould tongue has sich a way of clack, clack, ever an' always. An' I'm so cooramuch,* sittin' here; so purty an' so snug, bless the good providhers! Well, to come sthraight upon the thing we're discoorsin' about. It was apast twelve in the night when I left the wake, Miss Eliza, my honey. I was going to take my bed at Shaun-a-gow's that night. Shaun, himsef, was at the wake, an' so I knew I could get in. Whether or no, it's seldom's the time for this while agone, you'll get them in their honest, quiet beds, at Shaun-a-gow's : they do have roarin' work at the anvil, in the forge, at night, more nor by day.

* Exceedingly comfortable.