fatuity, and who knew no medium between the pretenders of the Hotel Rambouillet, and the unideaed beauties of a Turkish seraglio. Still he believed, that in spite of her equivocal and playful evasion, the handkerchief found by Lord Adelm was purposely dropped by Lady Clanclare. The motive of this mystery, as well as the train of events in which he had in some respects been involved himself since his arrival in Ireland, remained unfathomable. The agent and chief mover was still (he reflected himself into the conviction) the singular Bhan Tierna, whom O'Leary represented as one endowed with the art of vanquishing whom she pleased, and whose powers were darkly sketched, according to the genealogist of the Macarthies, in the obscure and remote prophecies of Friar Con.

The suspicions which now gradually lighted on the head of Lady Clancare

were necessarily withdrawn from Florence Macarthy, the refugee of the Convent of the Annunciation. With this person, the fate of General Fitzwalter was strangely linked. His connexion with the daughter of the brave Colonel Macarthy, to which he had alluded in his conversation with Lady Clancare, and with which, to his amazement, and a little to his confusion, that lady had confessed she was already acquainted, was a romantic episode in the strange history of his eventful life. To that event memory referred with a painful sensation, that originated in feelings not at rest with themselves. If there

was one circumstance in his life which had left a shadow behind it, it was his connexion with Florence Macarthy. His efforts to become reconciled to himself were reduced to a proposal, which hastily conceived, and as hastily executed, was contained in the letter which

he now lamented having trusted to Lady Clancare. The misery or happiness of his future life might depend upon the answer that letter produced; meantime he was the slave of feelings new to his nature, uncongenial to his habits, but powerfully assimilating with his vehement and restless passions. He Iwas the victim of a suspense intolera ble, and wholly at variance with a character formed alike to suffer and to enjoy; but unequal to hang upon the slow course of probabilities, for the sentence which would consign him to bliss or to misery, which he could neither hasten nor control, and which, for the first time, took his destiny out of his own hands, and placed him in subordination to the will or caprice of others. The business which had brought him to Ireland was effected. It was his interest to return immediately to England, and he could give to himself no

plausible cause of delay, but the necessity, he fancied, or believed himself to be under, of waiting an answer to the letter he had despatched to Florence Macarthy it would have been more consonant to his habitual modes of acting to have flown himself to her convent, and sought a personal interview, an immediate and decisive sentence: but his feelings opposed themselves to a conduct so natural; and he was more inclined to defer than to expedite personal communication with one, whose presence could only awaken ungracious association, and who was perhaps the only human being in existence before whom he would have blushed to present himself.

After a long slow-paced circuitous rout, considerably lengthened in fact, but apparently shortened in idea by the agitation of his thoughts, and the pre-occupation of his mind, he at last arrived at the portico

of Dunore; and, with the exception of old Crawley, who had left Dunore that morning for Dublin, and of Lord Adelm, who had not yet returned, he found the usual party assembled in the great hall of the castle, and disposed in a manner as ludicrous as it was unexpected.

Lady Dunore occupied the foreground. She stood, with a coarse bib and apron tied over her superb dinner dress of crimson satin, and filled with green rushes, which she was fastening. in sheaths. The floor was spread with the same materials, which Mr. Heneage, Mr. Pottinger, and Miss Crawley, were engaged in peeling; while Mr. Daly and Conway Crawley were reading the papers; and Lord Rosbrin, covered with rushes, was spouting "Mad Tom;" Lord Frederick and Lady Georgina, as usual, were lounging on an ottoman, and laughing together