"An old and tried friend of my mother's, Amelia." (Horatio never could help embroidering a little-the worthy gentlewo man had once been the late Mrs. Somerville's housekeeper.) "Though not born in an elevated station in life," Somerville continued, "Mrs. Mac Culloch has a spirit that would do honour to the highest. She was as fortunate in marriage as she deserved to be, which is saying every thing, and, in becoming the wife of a rich man, seemed only to have recovered the proper sphere for a mind so enlarged and generous to move in. Her conduct to Julia and myself, on one most trying occasion, was such as, I trust, I never shall forget. I allude to that fatal event in my family, which, though it may seem forgotten, is seldom absent from my memory-a recollection, the horror of which even thy love, Amelia, can hardly charm away."

Much agitated by the subject, Horatio was hastily quitting the room, when, unwilling to let his wife meet the benevo

lent

lent stranger with a gloomy impression, he turned back, and added-" You will find Mrs. Mac'Culloch, after the plainness of her first address is over, possessed of all that lively good sense and shrewd humour peculiar to her country. I am much mistaken if she does not amuse you. Poor Jeanie Mac Culloch! many has been the dispute, begun in awful severity, but terminated with playful gaiety, which I have had with her when an unlucky boy. I was something of a Pickle, and she, a rigid Presbyterian, and most attentive, as her countrywomen usually are to the duties of religion, used frequently to reprove the graceless habit I had, at but too early an age, taken up, of gazing, when at church, on such angels as you, Amelia, instead of fixing my thoughts upon objects really divine. One day, a little out of humour with her sermon, I bluntly retorted—' I have seen you do worse, mother, at meeting. Which is the greatest scandal, I beg to know, turning one's eyes on a pretty

girl for a moment, or closing them, in a comfortable nap, during the greater part of the service?' It may hae been sae,' she replied, devoutly casting up her eyes; ❝the deil's aye on the watch to tempt us, puir, sinful souls, even in the very house

of the Lord! But how comes it, Mrs. MacCulloch,' I insisted, that he never tempts me so? You see I don't sleep. Why does not the de'il lay the same snare for me, I say?'-'Why does he nae tempt ye?' she replied, fixing her keen, though benevolent eye on me. "Why! Guid troth! because he is sure o' ye, laddie!"

But neither Horatio's affecting retrospections, nor his lively anecdote, could awaken, in his lady's bosom, the least inclination towards Mrs. MacCulloch, and the day would have passed off but heavily for her, if it had not been for the grateful and sedulous attentions of Somerville and Julia. With all her good-nature, poor Mrs. Mac Culloch was, as most elderly persons have been for these few thousand years,

years, alarmed and astonished at the extreme degeneracy of the times. After dinner, the conversation happened to turn upon a lady of distinction, who, though cited as having received an uncommonlycareful education, yet signalized herself, as a married woman, by every fashionable folly."Ah!" said Mrs. Mac Culloch, with a sigh, "who would hae thought it at the time there was sic a rout made about Miss Piercy, an' her discretion, an' her modesty, an' a' her good qualities!' It is sic women as lady that mind one o' the auld Scots proverb-Sae mony gude girls, whence the de'il aw the bad wives ?"

Whether this aphorism suggested to Julia some correspondent train of ideas, or whether the circumstance was purely accidental, cannot be known; but certain it is, Miss Somerville, who now rarely or ever smiled, was irresistibly amused with this sally, and, seized with that species of convulsive merriment to which the miser

able

able are at times subject, laughed unrestrainedly.

Amelia changed colour, but had sufficient command over herself to join in the laugh, and afterwards to converse for a few moments with more than her former vivacity. She however soon rose from table, and Horatio, to whom none of her movements were indifferent, remarked that she did so earlier than usual.

Prompted by an inquietude which every moment increased, he followed her, and found her in the dressing-room, in a fit of hysteric passion, which Julia was vainly endeavouring to appease." Leave me, Miss Somerville," she said; "your attentions are painful to me.

With the anxiety of the truest affection, Horatio eagerly demanded the cause of her disorder.-"Your sister insults me," sobbed Amelia, "and avails herself of that vulgar old creature's coarse jest to level the most cruel sarcasms at me."

"Insult you, Amelia!” Julia exclaimed,

-"Oh,