When informed of Mr Delmour's dismissal, Mrs St Clair's indignation against her daughter was no less violent than unaccountable.

"You were born to be my ruin !" was her first exclamation-"To refuse, situated as you are, an alliance that would have secured you against the possibility of You know not what you have done-infatuated that you are!"-And she paced the chamber with a disordered mien, while Gertrude, too much accustomed to her mother's wayward moods to attach any peculiar meaning to her words, in silence allowed the storm to take its course. But, as is commonly the case with unjust displeasure, it took such a wide range, and branched out into so many ramifications of anger and invective, that " labour dire and weary woe" it would be to attempt to follow her through all the labyrinths of her ill-humour. Mrs St Clair was, indeed, a riddle hard to solve. Although not quite so hypocritical as to pretend to be inconsolable at the death of the Earl, yet, certain it was, that event had agitated her in no common manner or degree. And her daughter's exaltation, which, for so many years, had been the sole object of her ambition, seemed, now that it was obtained, to

have lost all its value in her eyes-the only visi ble effect it had yet produced, had been to render her more than ever violent, irritable, and capricious. She still kept her own apartment-refused to see anybody on the plea of her health-was restless and dissatisfied-and, in short, showed all the symptoms of a mind ill at ease.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Love!

There is no spirit under Heav'n that works

With such delusion.

BEN JONSON.

THE want of a will is a desideratum which invariably causes disappointment to many an expectant. Perhaps, on the late occasion, no one felt more chagrined at this failure of the Earl's, than Miss Pratt. Although there was little difference in their ages, yet, from being of a lighter and more active nature, she had always looked upon herself as at least twenty years younger, and had all along settled in her own mind that he was to die long before her; and from having at first contemplated the possibility of his leaving her a small legacy, she had next considered it as highly probable that he would leave her something very handsome, and, at length, all her doubts had re

solved themselves into the absolute certainty of his doing something highly to his own credit. Not, to do her justice, that she looked to it so much for her own aggrandizement, as for something to bequeath to Anthony Whyte in his necessities; as she declared, that, in these times, Anthony found he was pinched enough with his three thousand a-year.

Miss Pratt could not, therefore, reconcile herself to this desideratum; but spent her days in rummaging the house, and expressing her amazement (which, far from lessening, seemed daily to increase) that the will--for a will there must be should be missing, and her nights in dreaming that the will had been found. The will, she was certain, would cast up yet-nobody knew poor Lord Rossville better than she did-she might say, they had been like brother and sister all their lives; and nobody that knew him-worthy, wellmeaning man that he was!-could ever believe that he would go out of the world, and leave things all at sixes and sevens.-Not so much as ten guineas even for a mourning ring to his oldest friends and nearest relations-the thing was quite impossible. She only wished she had access

to his repositories, she was sure she would soon bring something to light-some bit paper, or letter, or jotting, or something or another, just to show what his intentions were; and she was sure Lady Rossville would willingly act up to it, whatever it was—for he was a just, upright, friendly, liberal, well-principled, well-meaning, kind-hearted man -an honourable-minded man, with a great deal of strong natural affection-a man that had always, and upon all occasions, shown himself her steady friend and well-wisher, &c. &c. &c. There was one drawer in particular, the right-hand drawer of his writing-table, the end next the window she had several times, when she had occasion to speak to him in his study, found him busy there.-Poor man-the very last time she saw him there, he was working amongst some papers in that very drawer-She wondered if it had been well searched, and so on.

Gertrude had no doubt but that due search had been made there as in other places, by the constituted authorities-and she had too much respect for the late Earl's feelings when living, to suffer Miss Pratt to invade his repositories, now that he was dead;-but, weary of hearing the