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'O, my lamb! no one has the power to take you from me now.'

whom, spite of evil tongues, she has so fondly cherished. It is the heir presumptive to one of the oldest earldoms in England that stands before her-the hope of a noble house-the legitimate son of the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Muiraven-the-theHonourable Thomas Keir.

At the thought, miserable as she is, she laughs. The Honourable Thomas is reassured.

'Mamma! I want more pudding. Your little Tommy-boy wants more pudding!' he repeats confidently, reading acquiescence in the nervous sound.

'You're not my little Tommyboy,' she commences bravely-but here memory, like a dark wave, sweeps over her and blots out all her courage.

'Oh! I cannot-I cannot part with you!' she cries vehemently, and thereupon becomes horribly feminine and goes off into a burst of hysterics. The sobbing and the shrill laughter penetrate to the lower regions and bring up the landlady, with, to use her own expression, her heart in her mouth.'

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as she speaks, and dashes her face in cold water, and will not give herself time to think. She is ashamed of her weakness in breaking down before a servant and a child.

The Hon. Tommy, reinstated in his chair, and consuming the remainder of the pudding, as though nothing had happened to disturb his pleasure, affords her the leisure she requires once more to peruse Muiraven's letter. There is no question about what she must do; there is no option permitted her of judgment or of choice; she is simply required to give up the child to his rightful guardian, and whatever it costs her, he must go! But she cannot meet Muiraven. Every misery of her life is connected with this man; he may even have been told the stigma that rests upon her for his sake. She feels as if she should sink into the earth with shame if she should see him. She is sore still and quivering from the effect of the constant shafts Fate loves to drive at her; her flesh and spirit alike recoil from the idea of discovering her misery to him-or receiving his sympathy and condolences. What good can his friendship do her? Each time they meet increases the pain of parting. It has pleased Providence to strip her of everything. Let it do its worst. She gives up love, friendship, all-thenceforward she will live and die-alone. So she sits down and pens the note which has been already given to my readers; which tells Muiraven that the child shall be sent to him, when and in what manner he may choose to intimate, but that she is as yet too little recovered from her late bereavement to permit of her receiving visitors.

Muiraven does not know what to make of her letter. He sup

poses that, having informed Irene that her adopted child is the result of an imprudent marriage between himself and the laundress's niece, and that he has but lately come to a knowledge of the truth, is sufficient of itself to convince her that this was the obstacle which prevented him from coming forward as a suitor for her own hand. But the fact is our heroine had never associated that obstacle with the idea of any early entanglement, and was so occupied with the principal object of his letter, namely, his intention to reclaim the child, that she never guessed that Myra's death had broken down the barrier between them. She only remembered that the man who had assured her, six short months ago, that nothing short of the impossibility of their union would have made him behave as he had done, and who was likely to prove a far more dangerous friend in her present condition than he had been before, desired a personal interview with her in order to deprive her of her last pleasure, and she could not grant it him.

She could not stand face to face with Eric Keir (as in her heart she always termed him), and cover the desolation of her spirit with a smile. And so she would rather not look upon his face at all.

But he is an impetuous, energetic sort of fellow, whose patience does not rank amongst his highest virtues, and he can conceive no reason for Irene's reticence, except that she has ceased to care for him. Perhaps she never did care for him. Perhaps she mistook her feelings all along, and her real affections had, after all, been given to this immaculate Colonel Mordaunt, the remembrance of whose excellences, after four months' burial, was still so redolent of sanctity as to forbid her

showing ordinary politeness to an old friend who had travelled so far to see her. At such a horrid time of the year, too! Added to being obliged to put up with all the désagréments of such a God-forsaken hovel as the 'Coach and Horses.'

Upon his word! what, in the way of sacrifice, does Mrs. Mordaunt require further? But women are so exigeantes, the more you do for them the more they want. When he was beyond her reach she appeared all devotion to him; now that she can have him any day he supposes she will keep him philandering after her for ten years before she will make up her mind to take him or to leave him!

Why on earth can't he forget her and have done with it? Hasn't he had enough of women, that the moment he finds he has got out of one scrape with the sex, he must do his best to plunge into another?

So he says and so he swears, as he marches incontinently up and down the parlour of the 'Coach and Horses,' wearing out his temper and his shoe-leather to no avail.

At first he resolves he will go over to Cocklebury himself tonight, and try if he can see Irene, but, on second thoughts, he abandons the idea. After her note it would not be kind-it would hardly be gentlemanly to attempt to violate her privacy so soon. He will wait till to-morrow to storm the citadel in person. Meanwhile he goes to bed, sleeps but indifferently, and is up at a most unusual hour for him the next morning, making great havoc (notwithstanding his anxiety) in the breakfast his landlady has provided for him, before he turns out in the cold, frosty air and takes his way towards Cocklebury.

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