CHAPTER XXXIV.

Chi puo dir com' egli arde é in picciol fuoco.

Meredith left Mrs. Archer's in a state of feverish excitement. He paced up and down the street, trying by projects for the future to drive away the memory of the past. The thought of his degradation before Isabella Linwood was insupportable; and the recollection that Eliot Lee had bestowed the stinging epithet of villain on him in her presence, roused his strongest passions and stimu lated him to revenge. He turned his steps towards Sir Henry Clinton's.

"I shall but do a common duty," he said, "in giving information that a rebel officer, high in Washington's favour, is in disguise in the city. I shall, indeed, be summarily avenged if Tryon should requite on Lee's head the death of Palmer." The man to whom his thoughts adverted was he in relation to whom Putnam had addressed to Tryon the famous laconic note :

"SIR,

"Nathan Palmer, a lieutenant in the service of your king, has been taken in my camp as a spy, condemned as a spy, and will be hung as a spy. "P. S.-He has been hanged."

The thought of such a catastrophe changed Meredith's He had no taste for tragedy. purpose. He believed that Eliot's visit to the city had relation only to Bessie, and shrinking from adding such an item to his account with her as the betrayal of her natural protector, he turned back, and retraced his way homeward, meditating a retaliation, better suited than revenge, to his shallow character. Passions flow from deep sources. Meredith's relations with Isabella were far more interesting to him than the life or death of Eliot Lee, or his poor sister; and in trying to devise some balm for his wounded vanity, he hit upon an expedient on which he immediately resolved. This alluring expedient was none else than an immediate engagement with Lady Anne Seton, which being antedated but by a few hours, would demonstrate to Isabella Linwood that he, and not she, had first thrown off the shackles; and would leave for ever rankling in her proud bosom the tormenting recollection that she had involuntarily confessed she loved him as he had tauntingly said, “a thought too late."

His decision made, he hastened home, dwelling with the most soothing complacency on his recent meeting with his cousin on the banks of the Hudson, and smiling as he thought how delighted she would be at his profiting by her hint, in thus soon offering to be joint tenant of her love-built American cot age.

"Where is my cousin?" he asked, as he entered the drawing-room, and found his mother sitting alone.

"Where she eternally is," replied his mother, throwing down her book and eyeglass, and rising with the air of one who has borne a vexation till it is no longer supportable; "it is the most inex. plicable infatuation; the girl seems absolutely bewitched by Isabella Linwood."

"But Miss Linwood is not at home this evening. I left her at her aunt Archer's."

"At Mrs. Archer's?-you were with her there, Jasper ?"

Meredith replied, smiling, and without attempting to evade his mother's probing eye." Yes, I was there, but much against my will, for I had hoped to pass this evening with you and my cousin."

"Thank you, my son, thank you. I flattered myself that all was settled in your mind-definitely settled-when you so gallantly assured Anne that you soon should be irretrievably in love,' leaving her to supply the little hiatus, which no girl in like cases would fail to fill with her own name. And now I will be perfectly frank with you, Jasper; indeed, if there is any thing on which I pride myself, it is frankness. You understood the intimation in the Italian stanza I gave you from the carriage this afternoon?"

Meredith bowed.

"It conveyed a little history in a few words, my son; I have simply aimed to be 'la stella,' by which you, a wise and skilful 'nocchiero,' should, taking advantage of fair winds and favourable tides, guide your vessel into port. But why speak in figures when we perfectly understand one another? Our dear little Anne-a sweet, attractive creature, is she not?-was left to my guardianship, or rather matronship, for your poor uncle was so very thoughtless as to vest me with no authority to control her fortune, or her choice of a husband."

"Bless my soul; is it possible!'

་་་

'Too true indeed. You now perceive in what embarrassing circumstances I was placed. This pretty girl on my hands, with her immense and unencumbered property; nothing short of the utmost prudence and energy on my part could save her from being the prey of fortune hunters (alas ! for poor human nature-the lady uttered this without a blush), rest assured, Jasper, that nothing would have induced me in these perilous times to cross the Atlantic but my duty to my orphan niece."

"And the remote prospect of benefiting me, my dear mother."

Mrs. Meredith was too intent on the interesting subject upon which she was entering to notice the sarcasm her son had not the grace to suppress.

"I had my anxieties," she continued, "I frankly confess to you, I had my anxieties before I arrived, about Miss Linwood, and-some few I have had since-"

Mrs. Meredith paused, and fixed her eyes on Jasper.

"On my honour you have not the slightest ground for them," he said.

She proceeded. "Miss Linwood is in some respects a superior young person; she has not the -the-the talent of Helen Ruthven, nor the-the -the grace of Lady Anne (no wonder the perplexed diplomatist hesitated for a comparative that should place Isabella Linwood below these young ladies); but as I said, she is a superior young person-a remarkable-looking person, certainly ; at least, she is generally thought so. I do not particularly like her style-tenderness and manageableness, like our dear Anne's, are particularly becoming in a female. Miss Linwood is too loftyone does not feel quite comfortable with her. On the whole, I consider it quite fortunate you did not form an attachment in that quarter-prudence must be consulted-not that I would be swayed by

ances !"'

"There must be something besides mere table Juxuries to make these suppers so attractive to my cousin."

"Undoubtedly, for as to that, you know, we have every thing that money can purchase in this demi savage country; to be sure, Anne might have a foolish, girlish liking for Miss Linwood, but then, I am quite confident-I hesitate, for if there is any thing on which I pride myself, it is being scrupulous towards my own sex in affairs of the heart; but I betray nothing, for though you are perfectly free from coxcombry, you are not blind, and you must have seen-"

"Not seen, but hoped, my dear mother," re*plied Meredith, with a smile that indicated assurance doubly sure.

"Hope is the fitting word for you-but your hope may be my certainty-I betray no secrets. Anne has not been confidential, but the dear child is so transparent-"

"She seems, however, to have been rather opaque in this Linwood attachment."

Yes, I confess myself baffled there; you may have opened a vein of coquetry, Jasper. I know not what it means, but it can mean nothing to alarm us. It is very odd, though-there is nothing there to gratify her, and every thing here. This very evening Governor Tryon called with the young prince to propose to get up a concert for her. By the way, a pretty youth is Prince William !— he left this bouquet for Lady Anne. The honour

able Mr. Barton and Sir Reginald were here too, and the Digby's; and there she is mewed up with that old frightful Mr. Linwood. She must think, Jasper, you are not sufficiently devoted to her."

"She shall not think so in future."

"Hark, there is the carriage!-I sent her word that I was not well. In truth, her absence has teased me into a head-ache, and my own room will be the best place for me.' Thus concluding her tedious harangue, the lady made a hasty retreat; and before Lady Anne had exchanged a salutation with Meredith, and thrown aside her hat and cloak, her aunt's maid appeared with a message from this "frank" lady, importing the sense of Lady Anne's kindness in coming home, and informing her that prudence obliged her to abstain from seeing her niece till morning.

"I am very sorry!" said Lady Anne, heaving a deep sigh, sinking down in the arm-chair her aunt had just left, resting her elbow on it, and locking pensively in the fire.

"You need not be so deeply concerned, my kind cousin; my mother is not very ill," said

Meredith, with difficulty forbearing a laugh at the disparity between the cause and the effect on his apparently sympathising cousin.

"Ill!" exclaimed Lady Anne, starting, "I did not suppose that she was ill."

"Then why, in the name of Heaven, that deep sigh ?"

"There are many causes of sighs, cousin Jasper.'

"To you, Lady Anne, so young, so gifted, so lovely, so beloved."

ing her face with her hands to hide the tears, that, "That should be happiness!" she replied, coverin spite of all the anti crying tendencies of her nature, gushed from her eyes.

"Those dimpled hands," thought Meredith, "hiding so childishly her melting face, might move an anchoret; but they move not me. I am too pampered-to know that I have been loved by Isabella Linwood, with all the bitter, cursed mortification that attends it, is worth a world of such triumphs as this. Poor Bessie, I remember toovide,' since I cannot have that which they deny. but, allons, I will take the good' the gods proCousin-"

my

"Did you speak to me, Jasper ?" "Now, by my life," thought Meredith, " words are congealed-they will not flow to such willing ears."

"I am playing the fool," exclaimed Lady Anne, suddenly rising and dashing off her tears. "Good night, Jasper-I have betrayed myself— no, no, I did not mean that-pray forget my weakness-I am nervous this evening for the first time in my life, and I know nothing of managing nerves-Good night, Jasper!"

Meredith seized her hand and held her back. "Indeed, my sweet coz, you must not go

now.

"Must not go! Why not?" she replied, excessively puzzled by the expressive smile that hovered on his lips.

Why not? Because you are too much of an angel to shut your heart so suddenly against me, after allowing me a glimpse at the paradise within."

"What do you mean?" she asked, now beginning, from Meredith's manner, and from the well-tutored expression of his most sentimental eyes, to have some dim perception of his meaning, and to be disconcerted by it.

"Dear Anne, did you not, with your own peculiar, enchanting ingenuousness, say you had betrayed yourself? Never was there a sweeter -a more welcome treachery." He fell on his knee, and pressed her hand to his lips.

"For the love of Heaven, Jasper," she cried, snatching her hand away, "tell me what I have said or done."

Nothing that you should not, dearest cousin ; your betrayal, as you called it, was, I know, involuntary, and for that the dearer."

"Are you in earnest, Jasper ?"

"In earnest! most assuredly; and do you, Lady Anne, like all your sex, delight in torturing your captives?-your captive I certainly am, for life."

The truth was now but too evident to Lady Anne; but she was so unprepared for it, her mind had been so wholly pre-occupied, that it seemed to her the marvellous result of some absurd misunderstanding. At first she blushed, and stam

mered, and then, following her natural bent, laughed merrily.

To Meredith, this appeared a childish artifice to shelter her mortification at having made, in military phrase, a first demonstration. His interest was stimulated by this slight obstacle; and rallying all his powers, he began a passionate declaration in the good set terms "in such cases made and provided," but Lady Anne cut him off ere he had ended his peroration. "This is a most absurd business, Jasper; I entreat you never to speak of it again. Aunt, or somebody, or something, has misled-misled, you certainly are. I never in my life thought of you in any other light than as a very agreeable cousin, nor ever shall. I am very sorry for you, Jasper; but really, I am not in fault, for I never, by word or look, could have expressed what I never felt. Good night, Jasper." She was running away, when she turned back to add, "Pray, say nothing of this to my aunt, and let us meet to-morrow as we have always met before." then disappeared, and left Meredith baffled, mortified, irritated, and most thoroughly awakened from his dreams. Her face, voice, and manner, were truth itself; and rapidly reviewing their past intercourse, and carefully weighing the words that had misled him, he came to the conclusion that he had been partly misguided by his mother, and partly the dupe of his previous impressions. The measure of his humiliations was filled up.

She

But his vanity survived the severe and repeated blows of that evening. Vanity has a wonderful tenacity of life: it resembles those reptiles that feed greedily on every species of food, the most delicate and the grossest, and that can subsist on their own independent vitality.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Heart! what's that?

Oh, a thing that servant-maids have, and break for John the footman.

If Meredith could have borne off his charming heiress cousin, his love for Isabella might have gone to the moon, or to any other repository of lost and forgotten things. But, balked in that pursuit, it resumed its empire over him. He passed a feverish, sleepless night, resolving the past, and reconsidering Isabella's every word and look during their interview of the preceding evening; and finally, he came to a conclusion not unnatural (for few persons give others credit for less of a given infirmity than they themselves possess), that Isabella's vanity had been wounded by the conviction that she had been, for a time, superseded by Bessie Lee; and that the ground he had thus lost might, by a dexterous manœuvre, be regained. Engrossed with his next move, he ap peared at breakfast-table as usual, attentive to his mother, and polite to Lady Anne, who, anxious to express, her good-will, was more than ordinarily kind; and Mrs. Meredith concluded that if matters had not gone as far as she had hoped, they were going on swimmingly. The breakfast finished, Lady Anne ran away from her aunt's annoying devotions to the Linwoods, and Meredith retired to his own room to write, after weighing and sifting each word. the following note to Isabella. He did not send it, however, till he had taken the precaution to precede it

by a written request to Lady Anne (with whom he had found out too late that honest dealing was far the safest) that she would, on no account-he asked it for her own sake-communicate to any one their parting scene of the preceding evening. His evil star ruled the ascendant, and Lady Anne received the note too late.

To Miss Linwood.

"Montaigne says, and says truly, that toutes passions que se laissent gouster et digérer ne sont que mediocres;' but how would he-how shall I characterise a passion which has swallowed up every other passion, desire, and affection of my naturehas grown and thriven upon that which would have seemed fatal to its existence!

"Isabella, these are not hollow phrases-you know they are not; and be not angry at my boldness. I know your heart responds to them, and, though I was stretched on the rack to obtain this knowledge, I thank my tormentors. Yes, by Heaven! I would not change that one instant of intoxicating, bewildering joy, when, even in the presence of witnesses, and such witnesses! you confessed you had loved me, for ages of a common existence. Thank Heaven, too, the precious confession was not through the hackneyed medium of words. Such a sentiment is not born in your bosom to die. I judge from my own inferior nature. I have loved on steadily, through absence, coldness, disdain, caprice (pardon me, my proud, my adored Isabella), in spite of the canker and rust of delay after delay; in spite of all the assaults of those temptations to which the young and fortunate are exposed. Can I estimate your heart at a lower rate than my own?

"As to that silly scene last evening, though it stung me at the moment, and goaded me to an unmeaning impertinence, yet, on a review of it, do you not perceive that we were both the dupes of a little dramatic effect? and that there is no reality in the matter, except so far as concerns the lost wits of the crazed girl, and the very natural affliction of her well-meaning brother, whose unjust and hasty indignation towards me, being the result of false impressions, I most heartily forgive.

"As to poor Bessie Lee, I can only say, God help her! I am most sincerely sorry for her; but neither you nor I can be surprised that she should be the dupe of her lively imagination, and the victim of her nervous temperament. I ask but one word in reply. Say you will see me at any hour you choose; and, for God's sake, Isabella, secure our interview from interruption."

In half an hour, and just as Meredith was sallying forth to allay his restlessness by a walk in the open air, he met his messenger with a note from Miss Linwood. He turned back, entered the unoccupied drawing-room, and read the following:

"I have received your note, Jasper; I do not reply to it hastily; hours of watchfulness and reflection at the bed-side of my friend have given the maturity of years to my present feeling. I have loved you, I confess it now; not by a treacherous blush, but calmly, deliberately, in my own handwriting, without faltering or emotion of any sort. Yes, I have loved you, if a sentiment springing from a most attachable nature, originating in the accidental intercourse of childhood, fostered by pride, nurtured by flattery, and exaggerated by an excited imagination, can be called love.

"I have loved you, if a sentiment struggling with doubt and distrust, seeking for rest and finding none,

becoming fainter and fainter in the dawning light of truth, and vanishing, like an exhalation in the full day, can be called love.

You say truly. Bessie Lee is the dupe of a too lively imagination, and the victim of a nervous temperament. To these you might have added, an exquisitely organised frame, and a conscience too susceptible for a creature liable to the mistakes of humanity. Oh, how despicable, how cruel, was the vanity that could risk the happiness of such a creature for its own gratification! I have wept bitterly over her; I should scarcely have pitied her, had she been the unresisting slave and victim of a misplaced and unrequited passion.

"After what I have written, you will perceive that you need neither seek nor avoid an interview with me; that the only emotion you can now excite, is a devout gratitude that our former interviews were interrupted, and circumstances were made strong enough to prevail over my weakness.

"ISABELLA LINWOOD. "P. S.-I have detained my messenger, and opened my note to add, that your cousin has just come in, and with a confidence befitting her frank nature, has communicated to me the farce with which you followed up the tragedy of last evening."

Meredith felt, what was in truth quite evident, that Isabella Linwood was herself again. He threw the note from him in a paroxysm of vexation, disappointment, and utter and hopeless mortification; and covering his face with his hands, he endured one of those moments that occur even in this life, when the sins, follies, and failures of by-gone years are felt with the vividness and acuteness of the actual and present, and memory and conscience are endued with supernatural energy and retributive power.

What a capacity of penal suffering has the Allwise infused into the moral nature of man, even the weakest.

The mind is its own place, and in itself, Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

Meredith was roused by the soft fall of a footstep. He started, and saw Helen Ruthven, who had just entered, and was in the act of picking up the note he had thrown down. She looked at the superscription, then at Meredith. Her lustrous eyes suffused with tears, and the tears formed into actual drops, and rolled down her cheeks. "Oh, happy, most happy Isabella Linwood!" she exclaimed. Meredith took the note from her and threw it into the fire. Miss Ruthven stared at him, and lifted up her hands with an unfeigned emotion of astonishment. After a moment's pause, she added, "I still say most happy Isabella Linwood. And yet, if she cannot estimate the worth of the priceless kingdom she sways, is she most happy? You do not answer me; and you, of all the world, cannot." Meredith did not reply by word: but Miss Ruthven's quick eye perceived the cloud clearing from his brow; and she ventured to try the effect of a stronger light. "I cannot comprehend this girl," she continued; "she is a riddle an insolvable riddle to me. A passionless mortal seems to me to approach nearer to a monster than to a divinity deserving your idolatry, Meredith. She cannot be the cold, apathetic, statue-like person she appears

"And why not, Miss Ruthven ?"

"Simply because a passionless being cannot inspire passion-and yet and yet, if she were a marble

I

statue, your love should have been the Promethean touch to infuse a soul. Pardon me-pity me, if I speak too plainly; there are moments when the heart will burst the barriers of prudence-there are moments of desperation, of self-abandonment. cannot be bound by those petty axioms and frigid rules that shackle my sex-I cannot weigh my words -I must pour out my heart, even though this prodigality of its treasures naught enriches you, and makes me poor indeed!'"

Helen Ruthven's broken sentences were linked together by expressive glances, and effective pauses. She gave to her words all the force of intonation and emphasis, which produce the effect of polish on metal, making it dazzling, without adding an iota to its intrinsic value. Meredith lent a most attentive ear, mentally comparing the while Miss Ruthven's lavished sensibilities to Isabella's jealous reserve. He should have discriminated between the generosity that gives what is nothing worth, and the fidelity that watches over an immortal treasure ; but vanity wraps itself in impenetrable darkness. He only felt that he was in a labyrinth of which Helen Ruthven held the clew; and that he was in the process of preparation to follow whithersoever she willed to lead him.

We let the curtain fall here; we have no taste for showing off the infirm of our own sex. We were willing to supply some intimations that might be available to our ingenious and all believing young male friends; but we would not reveal to our fair and true-hearted readers the flatteries, pretences, false assumptions, and elaborate blandishments, by which a hackneyed woman of the world dupes and beguiles : and at last obeying the inflexible law of reaping as she sows, pays the penalty of her folly in a life of matrimonial union without affection-a wretched destiny, well fitting those who profane the sanctuary of the affections with hypocritical worship.

While the web is spinning around Meredith, we leave him with the wish that all the Helen Ruthvens in the world may have as fair game as Jasper Meredith.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Adventurous I have been, it is true,

And this fool-hardy heart would brave-nay, court,
In other days, an enterprise or passion;
Yea, like a witch, would whistle for a whirlwind.
But I have been admonished.

Our humble story treats of the concerns of individuals, and not of historical events. We shall not, therefore, embarrass our readers with the particulars of the secret mission on which Eliot Lee had been sent to the city by the commander-in-chief. He needed an agent, who might, as the exigency should demand, be prudent or bold, wary or decided, cautious or gallant, and self sacrificing. He had tested Eliot Lee, and knew him to be capable of all these rarely-united virtues. Eliot had confided to Washington his anxieties respecting his unfortunate sister, and his burning desire to go to the city, where he might possibly ascertain her fate. Washington gave him permission to avail himself of every facility for the performance of his fraternal duty, consistent with the public service on which he sent him. His sympathies were alive to the charities of domestic

cause.

Eliot was instructed to seek a hiding place in the city at a certain Elizabeth Bengin's, a woman of strong head and strong heart, whose name is preserved in history as one who, often at great personal risk, rendered substantial service in the country's Dame Bengin and her parrot Sylvy, who seemed to preside over the destinies of the shop, and did in fact lure many a young urchin into it, were known to all the city. The dame herself was a thick. set, rosy little body, fair, fat, and forty; her shop was a sort of thread and needle store: but as the principle of division of labour had yet made small progress in our young country, Mistress Bengin's wares were as multifarions as the wants of the citizens. Mrs. Bengin's first principle was to keep a civil tongue in her own and in Sylvy's head, she holding civility (as she often said and repeated) to be the most disposable and most profitable article in her shop. It was indeed seriously profitable to her, for it surrounded her with an atmosphere of kindness, and enabled her, though watched and suspected by the English, to follow her calling for a long while unmolested.

She gave Eliot an apartment in a loft over her shop, to which, there being no apparent access, Eliot obtained egress and ingress by removing a loose board that, to the uninstructed eye, formed a part of the ceiling of the shop.

From this hiding place Eliot sallied forth to execute his secret purposes, varying his disguises, which were supplied by Mrs. Bengin, as caution distated. As all sorts of persons frequented the shop, no at. tention was excited by all sorts of persons coming out of it. Eliot's forced masquerading often compelled him to personate various characters during the day, and at the evening, with simply a cloak over his own uniform, and a wallet over his arm, like those still used by country doctors, and precisely, as Dame Bengin assured him. like that carried by the" doctor that attended the quality," he made his way, sheltered by the obscurity of the night, to Mrs. Archer's, where he was admitted by one of the children, whose acute senses caught the first sound of his approaching footsteps. Eliot, in spite of remonstrances from his prime minister, Mrs. Bengin, had persisted in appearing in his own dress at Mrs. Archer's. In vain the good dame speculated and soliloquised; she could not solve the mystery of this only disobedience to her counsel. "To be sure," she said, "it makes a sight of difference in his looks, whether he wears my tatterdemalion disguises, wigs, scratches, and what not, or his own nice uniform, with his own rich brown hair, waving off his sunshiny forehead -a bright, pleasant, tight built looking youth he is, as ever I put my two eyes upon; and if he were going to see young ladies, I should not wonder that he did not want to put his light under a bushel; but, my conscience! to keep up such a brushing and scrubbing-my loft is not so very hinty either-just to go before the widow Archer-to be sure, she is a widow; but then, there never was a man yet that dared to have any courting thoughts of her, any more than if she were buried in her husband's grave; and this is not the youth to be presuming."

the most anxious, and tender of brothers, he was not unconscious of her presence, nor unconscious that her presence mingled with his sufferings for his sister a most dangerous felicity. His fate was inevitable; he at least thought it so; and that fate was an intense and unrequited devotion to one as unattainable to him as if she were the inhabitant of another planet. He did not resist his destiny by abating one minute of those hours that were worth years of a drawingroom intercourse. In ordinary circumstances, Isabella's soul would have been veiled from so new an acquaintance; but now constantly under the infinence of strong feeling and fresh impulse, and a most joyous sense of freedom, her lofty, generous, and tender spirit glowed in her beautiful face, and inspired and graced every word and movement.

Her devotion to Bessie was intense; not simply from compassion nor affection, but remembering, that in her self-will she had insisted, in spite of her father's disinclination, and her aunt's most reasonable remonstrances, on Bessie's visit to the city, she looked upon herself as the primary cause of her friend's misfortunes, and felt her own peace of mind to be staked on Bessie's recovery. What a change had the discipline of life wrought in Isabella's character the qualities were still the same; the same energy of purpose, the same earnestness in action, the same strength of feeling, but now all flowing in the right channel, all having a moral aim, and all governed by that religious sense of duty, which is to the spirit in this perilous voyage of life what the compass is to the mariner.

Of Bessie's recovery there seemed from day to day little prospect. One hopeful circumstance there was. The intelligent physician consulted by Mrs. Archer had frankly confessed that his art could do nothing for her, and had advised leaving her entirely to the energies of nature. Would that this virtue of letting alone were oftener imitated by the faculty! that nature were oftener permitted to manifest her power unclogged, and unembarrassed by the poisons of the drug-shop.

Bessie was as weak and helpless as a new-born infant, and apparently as unknowing of the world about her. With few and brief exceptions, she slept day and night. Her face was calm, peaceful, and not inexpressive, but it was as unvarying as a picture. Her senses appeared no longer to be the ministers of the mind; she heard without hearing, and saw without seeing, and never attempted to speak. At times her friends despaired utterly, believing that her mind was extinct; and then again they hoped it was a mere suspension of her faculties, a rest preluding restoration.

While fear and hope were thus alternating a week passed away. Eliot's mission was near being accomplished. The evening of the following day was appointed for the consummation of his plans. The boats, with muffled oars and trusty oarsmen, were in readiness, and the plan, for the secret seizure of a most important personage, so well matured, that it it was all but impossible it should be baffled. The most brilliant result seemed certain, and wellbalanced as Eliot's mind was, it was excited to the highest pitch when a communication reached him from head-quarters, informing him that Washington deemed it expedient to abandon the enterprise of which he was the agent; and he was directed, it' possible, to cross the Hudson during the night, and repair to the camp near Morristown. And thus ended the hope of brilliant achievement and sudden advancement; and he went to pay his last visit to his sister for the last time to see Isabella Linwood.