"Help me to undress, Letty, and let me sleep. You cannot know how sick I feel."

Tenderly as if she were fondling an infant, Letty prepared her young mistress for the night's repose, which she feared would not visit her pillow. She combed and brushed her rich, tangled locks, letting them drip over her black fingers, in blacker, shining curls. There was nothing in the world in which she delighted so much as this, and though her features were large and coarse, she had remarkably small and delicately-shaped fingers, and her touch was light and tender as a nursing mother's.

"Thank you," said Florence, suffering her head to fall languidly back on the pillow. "That is soothing. You are a good creature, Letty. I will try to sleep."

Letty placed the lamp in the chimney, where it could not shine on the face of her young mistress, and seating herself at a distance, remained perfectly still. Florence too was still. It was the torrent's smoothness, after it has dashed over the rocks-the lull of the tempest, when its fury has spent.

She slept but it was not rest. Every now and then she would start up, with a faint scream, look wildly round her, close her eyes, and fall back again. Once she cried out, "The letter-oh! Marcus-that letter!"

Letty sat in her shaded corner, and "pondered these things in her heart."

Florence rose at the usual hour, and suffered Letty to linger with unusual care over her toilette. Though her head throbbed almost to bursting, she allowed her tirewoman to twist the wild undulation of her tresses around her fingers, as she was wont to do. When she looked

in the glass and saw her pallid cheek and altered countenance, she blushed, indignant at her own weakness, and the life came back to her cheek and eye. Delaval met her at the door of the breakfast-room with a brotherly kiss. He was rejoiced to see her looking so much like herself, and his own stern, joyless countenance brightened as he gazed upon her. But after the first greeting was over, and she believed herself unnoticed, he remarked the gradual subsiding of her spirit. The colour all went away from her cheek, and she sat with drooping lashes, that threw a deeper pallor on her pensive face.

"Come and take a ride on horseback with me, sister," said he, when the breakfast was over, which he scarceltouched. "I want to shew you what wonders I have done on the plantation since I have taken the reins in my own hand. That fine jaunt I had with Arnold's negroes was an excellent apprenticeship for me. They thought I was a jewel of a master."

Florence appreciated her brother's motive, and gladly accompanied him. She wanted to get away from herself. It was astonishing how her life came back to her, when she went out into the open air on a light-footed pony. The haughty spirit that sustained her of yore returned to her bosom. She would not weep, and sigh, and pine, for an ingrate, unworthy of woman's generous, uncalculating love. She would rend him from her heart, whatever might be the pain. Thus she resolved, and thus, in the presence of others, she appeared to feel and act; but when alone, she lived over again the fleet, blissful dream of the past, and nature vindicated its rights. Then, her unconquerable love soared above the remembrance of

ingratitude, scorn, and contempt. It was a love like that which mourns for the dead; for he whom she loved no longer existed. A bright ideal, it had vanished, and left a vacuum the whole world could not fill.

She had one task to perform which she dreaded, but would not defer. To gather all the mementoes of her ill-directed attachment; to return his letters and pledges of love; to destroy the faded flowers she had been treasuring as holy relics. She took from her finger a ruby ring, the token of his plighted faith, and drew through it the golden chain which he had passed round the neck of Rosa. The ruby was her favourite gem. Its glowing hue heightened the dark splendour of her beauty. Now, as she looked for the last time on a pledge she had thought might remain on her finger, even under the dark coffin-lid, it seemed to be the breaking of an additional tie. The letters she would not read, lest a re-persual of pages so fraught with fascination should soften her purpose, and unfit her for the stern duty before her. Her task was finished; the few decisive words written; the packet sealed, directed, and ready to be sent. Then she sat down, and shuddered at the blank before her.

The more she reflected, the more she blamed herself, and exculpated him. She had shocked, disgusted him, by the greatness of her love. From the time when, a wild, impulsive girl, she had met him by the wayside fountain, and felt that strong, irresistible attraction which modern philosophy vainly attempts to explain, and addressed to him those anonymous letters, to the moment the paper destined to reveal herself to herself in a true light fell at her feet, that love had been growing stronger,

deeper, fuller. It was too strong, too deep for the narrow channel in which custom had forced it. It had dashed over some conventional restraints, some ancient landmarks, and flowed on in the strength and joy of its waves.

Why when she heard that he was wounded and dying, a stranger in a strange place, did she not do as others of a colder temperament would have done, content herself by shedding a few unavailing tears, and wishing she were privileged to minister to his sufferings? Why, disguising the heiress under the form of an humble mulatto, protected only by the faithful Letty, had she pressed on through unknown difficulties to be with him in sickness and danger, perhaps in death? Her self-devotion, her love, how had it been repaid? With scorn and loathing, that neither gratitude nor former love could triumph over. She had believed her disguise impenetrable-her secret unrevealed. But Marcus had penetrated the one, and revealed the other.

She must endure the shame, and bear the cross she had laid upon herself. She would walk the lonely path she had herself strewed with thorns; and though her feet might bleed, and her spirit faint from pain and weariness, she would not murmur, but trust, that chastened by suffering, she might at last reach some quiet spot

"Where storms of passion never blow,

Temptations never come."

Such were the thoughts of the young, rich, and beautiful Florence, while she imagined no human eye beheld her in the solitude of her lamp-lighted chamber.

But Letty, though stretched on her pallet, which according to the custom of the south, was spread every

night in the apartment of her young mistress, watched each change of her varying and expressive countenance with unsleeping interest.

Florence caught a glimpse of her big, revolving eyes, above the bed-cover, and extinguished the lamp. Still the negro gazed on her starlit profile, and continued her musings. She was trying to solve an enigma, and had any one asked her by what mental process she had arrived at certain conclusions, she would have answered, like a mathematical prodigy of her own colour, "I just studies it out."

CHAPTER XIV.

"Tis a noble youth," the people spake,
"Thou need'st not be afraid,

For all oppress'd and injured men

66

Fly unto him for aid.

Now, where is one shall do us right?"

A widow pale thus cried

"Oh! where is one to take my part,

Against the men of pride ?"-MARY HOWITT.

IF almost unexampled success could produce elation and vainglory, Marcus Warland was in danger of inordinate self-esteem. Circumstances had favoured in a remarkable manner his opening career. As a pleader in the Courts of Justice, his reputation and acknowledged success were every day strengthening his position and adding