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"Here, here, father! to forgive and be forgiven! Here, mother! to love and bless you! Here, Percy de Vere, husband of my heart! to show you the strength of woman's trusting love!" And, with a wild bound, she threw herself into the arms of one who yearned to feel so true a heart beat against his own.

To the many questions of "Where, my child, did you come from?" • Where have you been?" "How did you live through these long years of gorrow and suffering?" her soft answer came

"Where my child was, I was. Sheltered by you, fed by you, clothed by you. What roof but a father's could shield a daughter's honour from the storms of the howling world? But you, mother"-and she left her husband's arms to throw herself on Nell's bosom-"how came it that you never recognized in the dumb Martha your own loving Canth? No; you could not, with hidden hair, disfigured face, and voice which would have betrayed all, silent-'twas impossible !"

Poor old Mick had, since the perusal of his daughter's marriage-certificate, seemed to be so wholly absorbed in his own thoughts and mutterings, that he was perfectly unconscious of all that was going on around him. In a self-satisfied, child-like manner he kept repeating

"I knew his voice; I would have known it in a hundred. Blind men have sharp hearing. But Nell persuaded me out of my reason. It was a queer dream, sure enough; it was a queer dream." Ana indeed it would have been a difficult matter to persuade him that the same dream had not a great deal to do with the happiness which now reigned with its holy calm around him.

Little Moll (or, as she'll be styled now, I dare say, Miss Marie), quite refreshed after her three hours' sleep, was as merry as a cricket; and so, with the beautiful Canth passing from one to the other, with words of love and forgiveness, caresses, prayers, and thanksgivings, the booming of merry peals chimed from her castle home, and ushered the New Year in.

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WHENEVER I Would escape uneasy thoughts, or soothe a weary head; or whenever I have a mind to be idly contemplative, one resource I have always at hand. Some people keep a favourite book about them for this purpose; others (I do not know any instance, but there must be many such) find the same charm in a picture. Were I obliged to choose between these means, I should certainly select the latter-a portrait, or a fine flat Dutch landscape. As it is, my resource is of similar character: I fall back on my grandmothers, the whole series of them, up to the remotest period of which British history takes cognisance. Clearly, one must have had a grandmother extant-in every age of the world. The life that moves in this hand has flowed in one uninterrupted stream through countless generations. If you prick your finger, there starts blood that burned in the cheek of some pretty miss who heard the hurrahs of the Blessed Restoration-in lips that were kissed, perhaps, by that naughty Plantagenet Edward the Fourth-in hands that spun at the domestic wheel A.D. 860: while the feet thereunto belonging rocked the cradle in which lay a grandfather (in the then futuro), and he with some thirty or forty after him. All to grow up to be men. All to be good or bad, idle or valiant. All to go courting. All to take home wives-in this costume or that, fair or dark, tall or short-with more or less of love. All to begin the world as if there was nothing but youth in it, as if they could never grow old and become grandfathers and grandmothers too.

And this is what makes it so pleasant and so touching a contemplation. I do not think of my male progenitors, because that would be more or less like a glance at the history of England. They represent the serious work of it-fighting, farming,

building, buying, and selling. The women represent the sentiment, the homelife-more, somehow, of the human-nature part of it. Give me the choice of these pictures my mother of 1400 making puddings at home, and my father her husband charging into the ranks of the French-set your price fivefold higher for the one than the other, and see which I will take! Let me draw you the pretty creature, as I contemplate her now. Yes, yes, you may laugh at her dress, madam, but that is half the charm to me. She would laugh at you could she see you in your costume, no doubt. Above all, I do not always think of these ladies as old grandmothers-why should I? Fifteen years of their lives they were children; five they were lasses; twenty they were strong, comely women; that is more than the half of life. I love best to dwell upon these three periods; my favourite pictures of them are two: as they walked to church, or rode a-palfreyback thither; and as they sat at their husbands' hearths five or ten years afterwards. Of course, the whole scene is there-in one case, the bridal party and the landscape through which they passed, and the church, and whatever of old pagan ceremony still clung about the new and Christian one; in the other case, an appropriate "interior."

However, am not to write an essay but a story, or, here are thirty fair pages which I could cover with this subject as we have begun it. I simply recommend my plan to you for the profitable use of unoccupied hours; and will relate what happened to me in consequence of doing so one evening, after a hard day's work.

Here I am in what some people would call a study; others a library; others a book-room: pardon me-I am modest: it is my work-room. I had a spell at politics before breakfast, and flatter myself I have "done" a leader that will shake a certain minister to his foundations; after which I passed five affecting hours with a young couple who can never be happy, I am afraid, not even in the last chapter; and two more hours after dinner in considering what I am to do with the lady's father. He must either prove a "misunderstood man," or be hanged: and the first is improbable, and the latter is unpleasant. I wish to Heaven he could settle the matter himself! Wearied more by this knot in the skein of the story than by all the work of the day, I extinguish my lamp, and stir the coals, and trim my evening pipe, and fall back into a reverie of grandmothers.

My writing-table is a round one, the fingers of my left hand did rest upon it, and I may be a medium, without knowing it. Should this prove to be the case, I can only say I shall shake no more ministers, and write no more stories; for I have a young family to support, and I find provisions rising with credulity. However, this is aside.

My first pipe of tobacco had expired gratefully, like a soul that makes a good end, and I was just about to replenish the bowl, when some one tapped at the door. I would have said, "Come in ;" but whether from displeasure at being disturbed, or from some other cause connected with the spirit-world, I only whispered the words. That I distinctly remember. But no matter. My visitor entered; and so charming a creature, I suppose, was never seen in this century.

'Twas a young and elegant woman, in the costume that prevailed in the days of Mr. Addison. Her cheeks had more than the bloom of the peach, and were ornamented by the moon on one side, and Charles's Wain on the other, in black plaister. Her dark eyes were not large, but they had wonderful lustre, with a

trick of looking this way and that in short, quick glances, half arch, half suspicious, as if she would say, "Now I know I am a pretty woman, and I know you men are very naughty. If you must love me, love me at a distance, there's a dear creature! or I shall be angry, and run away." As she made me a delightfully demure courtesy just within the doorway-with these eyes about her -I at once remembered having seen a picture of her as a "Nymph at the Bath;" and it occurred to me either that the painter had taught her this trick of the eyes to favour his work, or that her possessing it naturally had led him to select the character in which he had painted her.

When the lady entered-(which she did with difficulty, for my door is narrow, and her hoops were wide)—with her elegant flowered sack, and her hood drawn over her pretty powdered locks, you cannot tell how glad I was that I had my new dressing-gown on. How ridiculous a contrast would a shooting-jacket have made! As it was, my flowered silk gown not only emboldened me to address the lady, but enabled me to do so with more of the manner of her time, perhaps, than a creature in a shooting-coat could possibly feel.

Rising as the young lady entered, I made her a bow so elaborate, that I had nearly repeated it the next moment for my own gratification; and then leading her into the room, closed the door. At which she made me another charming courtesy.

"Pray, madam," said I, "be seated. It is a humble little den, but you find one in it who is already at your command."

"No excuses, my dear," returned the lady, as she disposed herself in my armchair-the only one in the room that could possibly have accommodated her"though you certainly are horridly narrow here! But don't you wonder at my temerity in venturing alone into your cell ?"

"Pardon me-at your condescension, madam! And no woman is alone," said I, with a passing illusion that I was not only an eighteenth-century man, but a moralist of that age-" no woman is alone who has Virtue at her side.”

"Pooh, child! I knew a time when gentlemen all had swords at their sides, but they frightened nobody in life, and were never meant to draw. Nay, now you look astonished. But it is of no use. When one is a ghost, and a greatgreat-grandmother, there's an end of flummery, believe me. Draw your chair closer, child, and harkye! I am your great-great-grandmother, you know! Isn't that droll ?"

And here the lady, laughing and tapping my arm with her fan, looked with those arch eyes first upon a looking-glass with which the handle was inlet, and then into my face, at least five years older than her own. The smile lingered not long, however. Provision had been taken against her turning pale-the moon and the seven stars gloomed in a constant firmament of sunset clouds; but her lips quivered, and little by little her eyes filled with grief and terror.

"The Fates were kind to you, madam. They preserved your youth perennial !" "No more of that, I beseech you. I had rather the Fates had not meddled with my youth."

"Then at least they have been kind to me. It is not every one who is permitted to behold his great-great-grandmother n all the beauty of her youth. To see you so, to-to kiss your hand [which I did]—is like going back to the fountains of life, to drink anew !"

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"But

Toujours le même, you men !" sighed the lady, a little recovered. if you like the draught, child—a man may salute his grandmother's lips, I suppose, even in this age, which is incontestably moral, I hear!"

To tell the truth, I felt a little hesitation in accepting this frank invitation; but politeness obliged. Leaning forward, as the lady drew her head backward till it rested on the high-cushioned back of the chair, I touched her lips. She closed her eyes not to witness the operation, and did not open them again till I had resumed my seat; and in this way she contrived to make me feel as if I had saluted her in her sleep, and unaware.

"Well, my dear!" said she, after a momentary silence, "this isn't a visit of ceremony, you know!"

"I do not think myself so much honoured. Your attentive servant, ma'am !" Upon which I rose, and intimated with another wonderful bow, of which I have since failed to recall the trick, that I listened, and was prepared, if necessary, to obey. The lady, looking along her fan, commenced at once.

"Pardon me, but in our quarter-I need not mention where-it is said you are an author.”

"Your friends do me honour!"

"Do they?" said she. "In my time, child

are an author. You are not a poet, I'm sure!"

-but no matter. They say you

"I have written some trifles in my day, ma'am !"

"Yes, yes; 'Strephon to his Mistress.' All young gentlemen do so. But you are not a poet. Don't say so, child, for I could not bear it. You write histories, and lives, and those things, I suppose ?"

"They are in my way !"

"So I am told. And you go back a century or so sometimes, and read books, and letters, and broadsheets, and-and dying speeches, to make your books of. 'Tis so, isn't it?"

I bowed.

"Perhaps our century has occupied you?"

"It is thought very interesting just now."

(Of course I did not tell my grandmother I knew little or nothing about it— that would have been impolite.)

"Then I will come to my business at once. You are not to believe a word of that scandal about your great-great-grandfather's murder!"

"Madam!" cried I, in astonishment.

"Ah! I knew what the world would say when my lord was arrested! I knew, as I lay dying that night, what lies would be cried in the streets! My lord was hanged, of course-(I have not met him since; he is not in our quarter, I suppose) but I do assure you, child, he was an innocent creature as any that lived !"

"Upon my life, madam, I don't know what you mean!"

"Are you there, sir? Mayhap you insist on my dishonour, too!-Other times, other manners!"

"Excuse me, nothing is farther from my mind."

"Because on that point you have only to look in your mirror, and then take a chair to Mr. Attenborough's, in Fleet-street, to behold the same face. I know the miniature is there, because an old gentlewoman of our family, who came

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