much exhausted, beside an open window, that they should take a stroll in the park to admire the rising sun, as well as to hear the birds carol their morning hymn of praise and joy. This proposal she most gladly adopted, anxious, if possible, to dissipate the painful impression of the scene between O'Hara and O'Grady. She delighted, also, in having a continued opportunity of conversing with that kindest of friends, Sir Richard. Theresa could now, with her usual frankness of heart and freshness of feeling, pour out to so benevolent and generous a listener the whole tide of her feelings and long-repressed emotions; while it was with a deep sigh of infinite relief that she at length exclaimed, after they had walked together during some time "Now all is told-all! You have nobly forgiven me, Sir Richard; nobly and generously; but I never can forgive myself-never!" 66 You must not speak too severely of a young penitent, a very great favourite of mine, who has been most deeply tried," answered Sir Richard, kindly smiling, as Theresa turned away to hide the starting tears that had sprung into her eyes. "Let me petition for an act of oblivion. A certain little niece of mine can do no wrong; or at least, if she does, the india rubber of repentance has expunged it entirely from my memory. Theresa! you and I have both been surrounded in a net woven by the deceit and crimes of others; but in this case you were far more sinned against than sinning." At this moment a little low phaeton, drawn by one grey pony, and driven with very skilful care by a lady, while another, somewhat younger, sat by her side, came whirling up the Torchester approach. The groom who accompanied it on horse-back had opened a gate to let the small equipage pass through, when suddenly one of the occupants, having looked for a moment at Theresa, gave a cry of joyful recognition, sprang lightly as a young greyhound out of the tiny carriage, and locked the startled Theresa in a rapturous embrace, exclaiming, in accents that trembled with delight"My own dear, dear sister! My own Theresa! have I found you at last?" Fanny hung round the neck of her newly-restored sister in a perfect paroxysm of joy and of rapturous exclamations, while Theresa continued during some moments overwhelmed in silent, trembling ecstasy. It seemed as if Fanny, between laughing and weeping, could have cried or danced for joy, -as if she were almost delirious with rapture; but suddenly her eye fell on the handsome beaming countenance of Sir Richard, smilingly looking on with benevolent pleasure at a scene of so much happiness, and her countenance changed to an expression of grave apprehension, of passionate earnestness, as she whispered, in trembling anxiety, to Theresa "Tell me-oh, tell me at once, dear sister-is all well and right with you? Who is that stranger?" "No stranger, Fanny, but the kindest and best of benefactors," answered Theresa, with affectionate emotion. "Words cannot express what I owe him! There lives not on earth any mortal more grateful, more indebted to another, than I am to Sir Richard Brownlow." Emily Plantagenet had been attending only to the joyful -meeting of these two long-attached sisters, so touching to a heart like hers; but that namee-that long-cherished namefell on her ears now as no other sound could have done, causing her to start, and turn hastily round. An unwonted colour burned on Emily's cheek; an unusual brightness illuminated her eyes; she trembled with unwonted emotion, and looked with an expression of hesitating uncertainty at Sir Richard. There, then, stood the first and only man who had ever gained a place in her early affections, whose memory had been cherished there ever since; whose unaccountable departure had consigned her for years to all the unspoken sorrow of an unrequited attachment. Scarcely had Miss Plantagenet glanced at him for a moment, before Sir Richard, with an exclamation of inexpressible astonishment and joy, sprang forward and seized her hand, saying in accents of unmistakeable delight— "Can this be possible? Am I so happy as once more to meet Emily Plantagenet? Say that you are glad to welcome back an old friend-more than a friend. Do not tell me that you have forgotten Richard Brownlow." 66 I never excelled in forgetting old friends," answered Emily, timidly. She seemed, during a short moment, almost ready to faint; but, quickly recovering herself, advanced with a frank and cordial smile, saying--" Nor can I pretend it would be possible for me ever to forget you!" Sir Richard again grasped the extended hand of Miss Plantagenet with a look of intense and almost solemn emotion, while she, her eyes cast on the ground, trembled visibly. Both remained for several minutes silent. It was a silence that spoke. It was the silence of most ardent feeling. Emily's lip quivered with speechless emotion; while Sir Richard's fine manly countenance had become pale as death. Yet, when he looked at Emily, his eye gradually brightened with an expression of hope. His voice was at length restored, and it assumed a new tone of sensibility and unwonted hopefulness, as he exclaimed, with fervour "Have I been cheated by Daniel in this, as in all things? Tell me, Emily, that you were indeed inviolably faithful to one who never loved, never could love, any one individual but yourself? Your smile allows me to hope! Can it be? This, then, is what I have despaired of, yet longed for with my whole heart these many long years,-what Daniel had persuaded me was impossible. How seldom is such happiness allotted to any living mortal. It makes me a boy again, to see you, Emily, once more! To see you looking as you do now!" It appeared, indeed, as if Sir Richard were again only twenty, and Emily sixteen. All the romance of youth seemed revived at once for both, and all the misapprehensions of their earlier years to have cleared off, like fog before the bright sunshine of so much felicity. Emily long remained silent, however, summoning courage evidently to speak, but words would not come at her bidding. Meanwhile, her countenance spoke enough to show how pleasingly she was agitated, when Sir Richard hurriedly led her towards a noble old oak-tree, the branches of which now overshadowed their path. 66 66 Here, Emily," he said, in accents of the deepest tenderness; what name is engraved on this venerable trunk? Ages have elapsed since I carved it there; but the impression has become deeper with every added year; and so it has been with your image on my heart. Neither time nor death itself could efface that from my best affections." After a pause of several minutes, during which Sir Richard waited anxiously for a reply, Emily almost whispered, as if thinking aloud “We meet now in cordial friendship, like a long-attached brother and sister." "No! impossible !-I never can be a mere brother to Emily Plantagenet. I shall wish there were no such relationship on earth!" exclaimed Sir Richard, earnestly. "Can you be no more to me, Emily, when I declare that every hope of happiness in my future life depends on your taking a place far dearer to me than any sister's. I cannot recollect the time when first I began to love you. The delight of doing so stole insensibly on my boyhood like daylight, and has shone steadily on me yet as my day-star in every changing scene of life. You could not desire to be loved more fervently than you are; for every thought of my heart has been yours, in sorrow, in joy, or in pain, since we parted." "We were deceived by many cruel falsehoods," answered Emily, in a low, quivering whisper, and a deep flush mantled on her cheek. "Neither of us are to blame. Both have suffered deeply. But it is too late, Sir Richard; you cannot restore the freshness of summer to an autumn leaf. Think of the difference, as Mademoiselle used to say, between 'une jeune femme et une femme encore jeune!' The long shadows of evening are already over my path of life, and," added she, looking up with a smile of almost angelic expression; "I have grown old and ugly." "Not to me, Emily! Not if your years were a hundred, not while you look so like your former beautiful self. We were but boy and girl when a malignant falsehood parted us; and now we have but entered on the prime of our days, when every feeling of nature is matured into perfection. Are not the flowers of autumu brighter far than those of spring and summer? Should you reject me, Emily, my winter is indeed come, and my every hope withered! Our separation formerly seemed the uprooting of life itself to me. I have learned fully to value such domestic happiness as we may yet enjoy, in Darby-and-Joan fashion together, more permanently than in our more romantic days. A home with you would be an earthly paradise, in which to brighten all life's faded flowers. Ever since we separated, I have lived on the past. May I not hope now for a joyful future,—for a renewal of old times, when such a meeting as this was all the happiness, during life, that I ever desired." Emily looked up, through blinding tears, with a smile that had in it all the radiant happiness of her earliest girlhood. She turned away, but held out her trembling hand to him, which he rapturously clasped in his own. Sir Richard now drew Emily's not unwilling arm within his own, saying, in his usual tone of cheerful hilarity— "It will be a ceaseless interest for us hereafter to talk over all that has occurred, and all that has not occurred, since we were treacherously parted." CHAPTER XXX. "This vile world and I have long been jangling, and cannot part on better terms than now."-Venice Preserved. WHEN the trial of O'Grady took place, a mob, never exceeded in number on any such previous occasion, poured like a roaring torrent into the court of justice, till in three minutes after the doors were opened it became full to suffocation. The tumultuous crowd swayed about like a forest in an autumn gale, while they elbowed each other, groaning aloud, and waving their arms in a state of half-jesting excitement, more fit for a cock-fight or a bull-bait than for an occasion when human life was at stake. O'Grady, in his cell, had been roused with difficulty from a deep, almost death-like sleep, such as that in which criminals are so often found on the eve of execution, and which is mistaken for a peaceful slumber. O'Grady's was a fearful awakening to consciousness. The realities around him were appalling indeed. It seemed to him a mere galvanized life, when, starting from utter unconsciousness, he remembered how soon and how certainly he must sink back into the insensibility of death itself. "Who has not felt, from senseless sleep awaking, O'Hara on the preceding day had been so impatient to see O'Grady's condemnation, that his principal fear evidently |