"Well, since you don't like the picture, you shall not be offended by it again," said the Countess, laying her hand gently on his arm to lead him from the place; "you shall have another dressing-room to your apartment, and you have only to forget the way to this one."

But uncle Adam now fixed himself opposite to the huntress queen, and, having carefully wiped and adjusted his spectacles, he contemplated her for some time without speaking; at length, with a groan, he said,

"I'll no say but what there may be something o' a likeness in the face, when you come to consider it-there's the brow, the bonny brent brow" then, kindling anew-" but wha e'er saw her brow wi' that senseless-like thing on the tap o't? They could nae pent her een, to be sure, for they might as weel hae tried to pent twa diamonds-the bit mouth's no entirely unlike, but it has nae her bonny smile." And uncle Adam gazed and commented, till he gradually lost sight of the moon and the bow, and all the offensive peculiarities of the sylvan goddess, and at length saw only the image of his long-loved Lizzie.

From that time the turret became his favourite

haunt; and as he was there perfectly unmolested, and was left at liberty to follow his own devices, secure from even the interruptions of Miss Pratt, he remained tolerably quiescent. Every day, indeed, he made an attempt to break off, and return to his own comfortless abode, but every day he was overruled by Lady Rossville, whose influence over him was daily increasing, although he was perfectly unconscious of it, and would have spurned the idea of being influenced by anything but his own free will. But there was also another inducement for him to prolong his stay, which he would have been still more ashamed to have acknowledged.

In a paroxysm of ennui one bad day, he had taken up the first volume of Guy Mannering, with little expectation of deriving either amusement or instruction from it; but, once fairly entered upon it, he found himself compelled, nolens volens, to proceed, which he did, however, in the most secret and stealthy manner. Uncle Adam had been no novel-reader even in his younger days, and with him, as with many other excellent, but we must suppose mistaken people, novels and mental imbecility were ideas inseparably united in his brain. Novel-writers he had always conceived to be

born idiots, and novel-readers he considered a something still lower in the scale of intellect. It was, therefore, with feelings of the deepest humiliation he found himself thus irresistibly carried along on a sort of King's-cushion, as it were, by Meg Merrilies and Dominie Sampson. Not that he traversed the pages with the swiftness of a modern reader-or that he read them probably with half the rapidity with which they were writtenfor he was one of those solid, substantial readers who make what they read their own-he read and re-read, and paused and pondered-and often turned back, but never looked forward, even while experiencing the most intense anxiety as to the result-in short, uncle Adam's whole being was completely absorbed in this (to him) new creation, while, at the same time, he blushed even in private at his own weakness in filling his head with such idle havers, and, indeed, never could have held it up again if he had been detected with a volume in his hand.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Oh! scene of fortune, which dost fair appear
Only to men that stand not near!

COWLEY.

AND now visions of earthly bliss-of pompof power-of pleasure, began to float before those eyes, scarce dried from natural tears. But Gertrude had not now so much time as formerly to indulge in the idle day-dreams of romance. With her change of situation, the penalties of greatness came thronging upon her. Unthought-of claims upon her time-her talents-her attention, followed in rapid and never-ceasing succession; and she found, with surprise and disappointment, that the boundless freedom she had so fondly anticipated as the attribute of power, was farther from her than ever. To will, indeed, was hers; but how many obstacles intervene to the accomplishing of the will, even of the most absolute !

obstacles which conscience itself raises as barriers against the encroachments of self-indulgence and natural inclination; and which, though as thin air to some, are as rocks of adamant to others. But Lady Rossville possessed a more powerful monitor than even conscience would have proved, in the person of Edward Lyndsay. "Une femme est aisée à gouverner," says a French satirist, 66 pourvu que ce soit un homme qui s'en donne la peine;"—and the truth of the assertion Gertrude seemed in a fair way to realize. Ardent and enthusiastic in her nature, and as such always prone to fall into extremes, the sense of dependence she felt towards her cousin, as the only person on whose judgment and rectitude she could safely rely, would gradually have assumed the habit of implicit deference to most of his views and opinions; not from conviction-for on many subjects they widely differed-but simply, because, like many other people, she loved to be directed in matters where her affections were not concerned, and was always ready to sa crifice her judgment, provided it did not interfere with her inclination. There is, indeed, much of luxury to an indolent, or a fanciful mind,