from the room. At the door she encountered Mrs. Clarke; and the late conversation proved that the gentleman needed no eloquence but his own. The next meeting between Emily and her aunt was awkward enough. Emily could not but feel how little respect had been shewn to her uncle's memory. Of course, she saw through and despised Mr. Sillery's mercenary motives; but equally saw that remonstrance would be vain. Mrs. Arundel, like most people who have done a silly thing, was rather ashamed to confess it, and yet glad to have it come out—we judge of others by ourselves—and had screwed her courage up for taunts and reproaches; and when Emily indulged in neither, but only quietly and distantly alluded to the subject, she felt rather grateful to her than otherwise. At the vicarage—for Dr. Clarke's parish lay close enough to be always disputing with its neighbour about boundaries and paupers-at the vicarage the disclosure was made. After dinner, the Doctor was in high good humour at what he called his penetration-joked Mr. Boyne Sillery-was, or at least did his best to be, witty about widows-and really did remember a prodigious number of jests, respect able at least for their antiquity. Mrs. Clarke comforted herself by the moral reflection of, 66 Money is every thing in this world," and giving vent to her spleen by an occasional sneer; while Mr. Sillery bore it all with a tolerably good grace, and meditated how soon he should be able to manage a separation. In a few days the news was whispered through the village. Nothing circulates so rapidly as a secret. One made one remark, and another made another;-some said, "how shameful!" -others," how silly!"-but the sum total of all their remarks seemed to be the old proverb, "No fool like an old one!" CHAPTER V. "Who loves, raves 'tis youth's frenzy—but the cure The fatal spell, and still it draws us on." BYRON. We shall find her such an acquisition to our circle. It is said, when things come to the worst, they mend. General assertions, like general truths, are not always applicable to individual cases; and though Fortune's wheel is generally on the turn, sometimes when it gets into the mud, it sticks there. However, the present case is confirmatory of the good old rule; for Emily's situation was on the point of being greatly altered, by one of those slight circumstances which are the small hinges on which the ponderous gates of futurity turn. The entrance to Fonthill-that truly cloudcapt palace, so fantastic and so transitorywas by two stupendous doors, which seemed to defy the strength of giants. A black dwarf came, and opened them at a touch: the mighty doors revolved on some small spring. These portals are the seemingly insuperable difficulties and obstacles of life, and the dwarf is the small and insignificant circumstance which enables us to pass through them. A severe shower in the park, which wetted Frank Mandeville to the skin, gave him cold, and in a few weeks reduced the beautiful and delicate child to a skeleton. Half the doctors in London were summoned; Lady Mandeville never stirred from his bedside; when one of them said, "The child is being petted to death; -let him try his native air, run about, and don't let him eat till he is hungry." His advice was followed. Norville Abbey, uninhabited since the first year of her marriage, was ordered to be prepared. Windows were opened, fires lighted, rooms dusted, the avenues cleared, the shrubbery weeded, with all the celerity of the rich and the wilful. Ah! money is the true Aladdin's lamp; and I have often thought the Bank of England is the mys terious roc's egg, whose movements are forbidden to mortal eye. The village and the bells were alike set in motion; the butcher and the baker talked of the patriotism of noblemen who resided on their estates, and went up to solicit orders; - Mrs. Clarke wondered whether her ladyship would visit in the country; - Mrs. Arundel simpered, and hinted "she dare-sayed some time hence they would be delightful neighbours; "- Emily said that Lady Mandeville, whom she had seen in London, was a very lovely woman, and thought no more about her-except, one day, when she heard a carriage drive into the court, to be out of the way - and once, when she caught sight of a strange shawl, to turn into another path; for she had gradually sunk into that sickly and depressed state of spirits which dreads change, and nervously shrinks from the sight of a stranger;-when, one morning, her path was fairly beset by two fairy-like children, and Lady Mandeville stepping forward, said, laughingly, "My prisoner, by all the articles of war; I shall not let you go without ransom." Escape was now impossible. They took the remainder of the walk together; and, her first embarrassment past, |