In the south-east corner of Cork harbour, between Rostillion and the little village of Aghadee, there stretches out a long, low promontory, which is joined to the mainland by an isthmus so narrow as at high-water to have the appearance of an artificial causeway. On this flat headland there is at present a modern house, but the ruins of a former building partly exist, and but a few years back (to speak by comparison) was the only evidence of its having been inhabited. Ruins, like tombs, have always a history of life attached to them; and those of Cork-a-beg were instinct with more than ordinary interest. Towards the close of the last century these remains made part of a large, heavy-looking mansion, the property of a nobleman suspected of disaffection to the (then) government; and who, from motives of policy, had withdrawn himself to its comparative seclusion, and with his family maintained the strictest retirement. Circumstances had occurred in the life of Lord Lucan to sour a naturally harsh and violent disposition, until the stern coldness of his manner, while it induced fear, repelled even in his children the affection and confidence that proves in every instance a stronger tie than the

indissoluble one of kindred. Fifteen years prior to the events which these chapters embody, his lady, wearied and disgusted by repeated acts of aggression and violence, had left him, taking with her the youngest of her children-a girl little more than three years of age. His lordship neither sought redress nor reconciliation; he contented himself by depriving her of the infant she had found it impossible to desert; so making her the instrument of her own punishment, she having, by this act, cut herself off from all further intercourse with her children. Besides this girl, the family of Lord Lucan consisted of two sons, and at the period of my story young men, about to enter one of the English universities; and a collegian of the name of Graham engaged to assist them in their preparations for that purpose. Death had recently deprived Mary Lucan of the lady who, in the capacity of governess, had supplied the place of friend and mother, and to whose care and talent she was indebted for a more than ordinary share of cultivation and accomplishment; she had also shared the studies as well as the amusements of her brothers, until the arrival of the English student, when she suddenly discontinued Latin and Greek, and

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took to solitude and writing sonnets. At this time Mary was just stepping out of buoyant girlhood into the sedateness of womanhood; scarcely tall, with a slight and delicately rounded figure, every action had the gracefulness natural to just proportion, and her expressive head and features were perfectly in keeping with its symmetry. Perhaps occasionally one might discover, in the quick dark flashes of her eye, something of the fierté of her father's glance, that bespoke a slumbering spirit not without affinity to his own, but this was seldom; like a flame beneath a shade, there was a moonlike softness in their usual expression, occasioned probably by the shadowy effect of lashes that, when cast down, swept her cheek, and imparted an air of pensiveness and timidity. Her hair and eyebrows were of the darkest hue, and where the small bow-shaped upper lip tapered off to a dimple, the faintest tracery of down, without effacing its effeminacy, gave character to its expression. Whatever softness lingered in the nature of Lord Lucan concentrated itself in this girl; she was his plaything in childhood, his ambition now, and, from her known influence, the established peacemaker on all occasions between him and the other members of his family. "But to our tale."

It was the afternoon of a late and lovely autumn day, one of those days we prize so much, from the knowledge that they are literally numbered, lingering with us like departing friends on the threshold of separation, with a soft warmth in the air, like a summer's day fallen asleep, and a tenderness in the aspect of every image it exhibited, softening and holy as the presence of a dying thing we love. The windows of a small room, at one end of the lonely-looking house at Cork-a-beg, were open, and at a table near one of them sat Mary Lucan, with her face half-hidden by her hands, and her eyes fixed upon some drawings, amongst which the sketch of a man's face begun, erased, and begun again, was still perceptible. The windows opened into a small flower-garden, now exhibiting all the wild luxuriance of growth and paucity of blossoms that mark the season; but a few late roses, the snowy flowers of the myrtle, and the rich fragrance of the hardy mignonette, fitfully sent their perfume into the apartment, and occasionally stole away the thoughts of its young occupant, to their Eden homes that in her childhood had been familiar to her. Beyond this a paddock, enclosed by trees of a large growth, exhibited all the rich and varied tints of autumn, the yellow leaves of the aspen shading into the scarlet foliage of the shumack, and the lighter greens of the ash and elm contrasting with the heavy sombre hue of the Scotch and Norwegian firs; the alternate swell and recession of the Atlantic, rolling its waves into the mouth of the harbour, might be distinctly heard; and the low monotonous soughing of the tide upon the beach, that everywhere skirted the enclosure, had in its sound something that harmonized well with the melancholy humour of

the girl; long silken threads of gossamer went floating by, or clung in silvery pennants to the crimson berries of the dog-wood, or the deep green leaves of the Indian jasmine, and every now and then leaves would fall one by one, whirling to the ground reluctantly, and looking in the dull still air not unlike flakes of slowlydescending snow, so stealthy and noiseless was their motion. The girl continued to trifle with repeated sketches of the features she was endeavouring to transfix from her mind to the paper, and as at length she caught the desired expression, a bright smile, and brighter blush, mantled her face from lip to brow; and for a moment she gazed delightedly upon her creation, and the next, pushing it from her with averted eyes, as if the pencilled lineament were sentient, she covered her face with her hands, and burst into tears. After a moment or two she arose, and with an impatient action threw back the heavy tresses that her attitude had brought over her clear broad forehead, and with a look of forced composure, and a prouder step than usual, walked to and fro the apartment; but, from whatsoever cause it germinated, the struggle in her bosom still went on, and heavy, swollen, resistless tears appeared to be the only outlet to the bitter thoughts that throbbed there. A step broke upon her ear; the girl paled and reddened by turns, and then placing herself again at the table, she suffered those luxuriant curls to overshadow her face as she returned to her graceful employment; only this time she did not try miniatures. The footsteps ceased at the window, and as Mary slightly, very slightly, lifted her eyes, for she knew the stain of tears was still on them, the original of her pencilled sketches stood before her.

"I hope I have not disturbed you, Miss Lucan," he said, noticing her evident embarrassment; "your brothers and myself have been as far as Castle Inchiquin*, and I have flattered old Donaldson upon the state of his green-house and orangery into such excellent good humour with himself, that he has requested me to present this bouquet to you with his duty, and to beg you will honour his dahliast with a visit.” And Graham deposited within the window a bouquet of rare flowers, arranged with even more gracefulness than Mary well knew the scientific hand of the old gardener would have effected, and with an action of respectful courtesy he passed on.

Although the language of flowers was not then, as now, universally spoken, Lady Mary Montague had introduced the germ, and the roses, that made so material a portion of the bouquet before her, had, from no end of time, typified love; so that although a momentary shade of vexation fell on the brow of Mary Lucan, as she perceived that he was gone, the

*The ancient castle of the O'Brians, now the seat of the Marquis of Thomond.

+ These flowers were first brought to this country in 1789, but being lost by some means, were again introduced by Lady Holland in 1804.

next she had appropriated the rare and graceful flowers, and with that strange, fond action which women have, of kissing everything that the touch of one beloved has sanctified, she pressed them as if they had been living things to her lips. The apparent cause of this passing ebullition was a young man of about four-and-twenty, of good height, and imposing countenance, with a forehead expansive, and pale enough for a poet's, shaded by a profusion of dark and shining hair, which, with a slight degree of affectation (though with admirable effect), was parted centrally upon it, and depended thence in a succession of rich natural curls, in direct opposition to the prevailing Brutus of the day. Eyes of the deepest blue gave animation to handsome and delicately outlined features, and altogether his countenance presented that " fair broad front" that appears to float on its surface, the reflections of a mind equally noble and unequivocal. I think it is Dr. Johnson who says, "A man may be a scholar without being a gentleman, but that it is impossible to be a gentleman without being a scholar." Graham was both; his family, originally noble, had been attainted for their faithfulness to the cause of the Stuarts, and in consequence of the altered fortunes of his house he had been educated with a view to the church; but having some scruples as to his fitness for the vocation, he abandoned the idea, and had accepted his present engagement in the family of Lord Lucan, until something more in accordance with his own wishes should occur. He found, in the daughter of his patron, a being to awaken not only love, but that most dangerous adjunct, commiseration. Left to her own guidance, at an age when impulse is ever stronger than discretion, her actions had all the inconsistency of its wild pilotage, and were entirely dependent for their rectitude and propriety on the naturally generous and correct tendencies of her disposition.

Petted, and undisappointed in any single project of her existence, she was naturally wilful; but then there was an amiability in her very despotism. Taxes were levied on her father's funds with more frequency than judgment, but they had charity for their object. Boats were dispatched to Cove for blankets or clothing, in weather that risked the lives of those whose services she commanded; but it was done on the spur of a generous impulse, and while every other consideration merged in the desire to relieve some present distress. Pride, that humbled itself only in the presence of affliction and want, was a portion of her nature; but though proud, impetuous, and wilful, there lay beneath the fire of these superficial appearances, a lava flood of deep and womanly feeling unexhibited, because, as yet, no circumstance of her life had been of a nature to disclose it.

The stern old man, her father, was revered rather from habit than from any sympathetic affection engendered by tenderness or reciprocity of sentiment; and there ever mingled with her feelings of duty a sense of some wrong inflicted towards her mother, that, though whispered

in childhood, still clung to her memory with the indistinctness of a voice heard in dreams; and this accusing feeling frequently occurred to her in the midst of her father's affectionate caresses, chilling towards him the stream of filial tenderness that a moment before swelled in his daughter's heart. Between her brothers and herself there existed that quiet attachment that naturally belongs to the relation, but which no contingent circumstances of separation or difficulty had tended to quicken or exalt.

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It was reserved for Douglas Graham to awaken all the strength as well as tenderness of her nature, and to afford an object for the outpouring of that affection, that, repressed and thrown back upon itself, had silently slumbered in her heart. In after life, when looking back upon its fitful snatches of repose, its broken and troubled slumbers, and those wild dreams of "vaulting ambition," or pining hope that made them so, what is there in its whole experience like the heart's memory of its first love? Nothing! The flush of unexpected fortune, the fulfilment of hope long sought and hardly obtained, the realization of a life-long ambition, may gratify and elate; but the pang of pleasure (if the phrase be not catachrestical) with which the first conviction of loving and being loved, that mysterious reciprocity, gushes on the spirit, is as ineffable in feeling as indescribable in effect, the one green spot on memory's waste," the single flower on the aloe of existence, L'etoile de la mer,' to which the wanderer on the deep of life is ever backward looking. But it is not necessary to trace the springing up of this sentiment in two young persons so situated as the daughter of Lord Lucan and her brother's fortuneless companion: thrown together at an age when its spells are strongest, daily interchanging the kindnesses and courtesies of household life, without those drawbacks that would naturally have existed in a family differently situated, it would have been the greater anomaly, if the result had ended otherwise than in attachment. Besides, it had happened that in early life Lord Lucan had formed an intimate friendship with Graham's father: a mutual acerbity of mind towards the existing government, a strong sympathy in favour of his own caste, and some degree of assimilation in their political positions, had effected in his lordship's mind a lasting predilection for the ex-noble, and created for his son as strong an interest as he was capable of feeling; hence, in his lordship's family, he was rather regarded in the light of a friend than a dependent; and his intercourse with them was that of perfect equality, subject only to such demarcation as his own proud reserve or haughty humility imposed. Adding the charm of accomplished manner to mature scholarship, and a mind of no ordinary power, he joined to the knowledge of a professor the modesty of a pupil, and, out of the study, preferred rather to interest than to astonish. How delightful was the acquisition of his society to the inmates of Cork-abeg! His information, as versatile as profound, threw a new light on every change of conversa