the favor of her company to England. In vain her friend, more rational than herself, endeavoured to dissuade her from the scheme, by dispassionately pointing out its numerous objections; Everilda had unhappily never been accustomed to listen to arguments opposing her inclinations, and calmly repeating, that none would be able to shake her resolutions, she again entreated Claudina to accompany her. This was a request more easily made than granted; the fear of being thought accessary to a step, which she entirely disapproved, and the dread of appearing ungrateful to her kind friends, the Marchese and Marchesa, made her very unwilling to go forward. But on the other hand, her attachment to Everilda, the reluctance which she felt, to reduce her to the indelicacy of travelling without a female companion, in such peculiar circumstances, and the security which she should be certain of finding in England, from her brother's cruelty, and implacable revenge,

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revenge, with perhaps a hope almost unconsciously indulged, of again seeing Clayton, made her equally unwilling to return. Everilda saw her advantage, and pursued it with the warmest entreaties, soon prevailed. When they arrived at the Villa Polastri, she dismissed her carriage, and all her attendants, but Bianca, her waiting woman, and Giuseppe, her own valet, who were in the secret. After chatting some time with the friend, of whom she had made use as a tool in her designs; Everilda informed her, that she and Claudina were going to stay a few days at a villa, four leagues further, and on their return, would spend the same time with her, but could not then prolong their visit, as the carriage was ordered to fetch them. The young lady knew the villa that Everilda named, though not the family to whom it belonged, and therefore when a handsome equipage was driven up to the door, she wished her friends an agreeable visit, saying, that she should

should impatiently anticipate the pleasure of seeing them again; and they proceeded entirely unsuspected. Lord Courtney soon joined them, and they proceeded to Bologna, resolving to lay their route through Germany. The indissoluble knot was soon tied, and the parties then wrote to their respective friends, to solicit their forgiveness of the past. Claudina also wrote a candid account of her ignorance of Everilda's intentions, when she left the villa, and of the motives by which she had been induced reluctantly to accomi pany her, on being made acquainted with them.

It is difficult to say, whether sorrow, mortification, or surprise, predominated in the breast of the Marchese and his lady. the blow fell the more heavily, from being wholly unthought of, for even if they could for one moment have suspected their daughter of artifice, a suspicion which from her natural candour and ingenuousness, would have appeared highly

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highly unjust, yet the return of the carriage and domestics, with their account of leaving the young ladies safe at the Villa Polastri, added to the circumstance of Bianca and Giuseppe being detained, as was usual, would certainly have disarmed the most cautious of their fears. The pride of the Marchese was deeply wounded, at his daughter's entering into any family clandestinely; and the anxiety of the Marchesa, was again roused, lest her child should have wrecked her happiness, by risking it with a man, whose character she had too great reason to dread, was that of a libertine.

- Mary Macdonald had borne parting with her faithless seducer, better than she had dared to hope; but her child was now all the world to her, and in clasping it to her bosom, she forgot its father's falsehood. Alas! she was not to possess this consolation long; the infant drooped, notwithstanding the cares which affection lavished on it; prophetic an

guish embittered its mother's fond caresses, and she had scarcely recovered from her confinement, when she was deprived of this pledge of unfortunate love. To attempt to describe her affliction, would be fruitless as painful. She contemplated the dying moments of her child, with the wild, though stedfast gaze of despair; hardly durst she breathe, lest she should hasten its dissolution; and when its quivering eyes were finally closed in death, she averted her's in the fallacious hope, that her fears deceived her, and that when she looked on it again, she should find that they had been groundless. Alas! it was too true, the little form waxed cold, nor could its mother's scalding tears, recal the genial warmth. Still she pressed it to her bosom, still she felt a melancholy pleasure in possessing it, and until she was compelled to resign it to the grave, she felt not the extent of her misery.