therein consisted the most vexatious circumstance of the night, for I had not yet secured them when the disturbance took place, and so closely was I pursued through the apartments by Mr. Conyers, that I was fain to beat a retreat through the passage communicating with Lady Geraldine's boudoir a necessity which, you may be sure, I did not find very agreeable."

A visible shudder passed through the frame of Benedict as he uttered these last words, and his face grew slightly paler. The sneer became more bitter on the lip of Lord Allerdale as he noted this emotion on the part of his companion, and he said, scoffingly, "Why, Benedict, my excellent Benedict, are you too, with your nerves of steel, going to give way to the vapours and tremblings of our moral and religious friend, Richard Musgrave himself?"

"Your lordship is at an advantage in ridiculing feelings which you avoid the chance to comprehend," answered the lawyer; "but I question whether your nerves would have proved firmer than mine were, had you in the like manner been compelled to grope your way through those horrible passages in the dead hours of the night, for the first time, too, during fifteen years, the first time since that night which you, my lord, should remember no less than I.”

"I remember it very well," returned Lord Allerdale; “but you must permit me to doubt whether I should be so fooled by my senses that a dark room or a dismal passage, even though they were the scenes of that same night's catastrophe could invest the recollection of it with any disagreeables which I do not equally experience here, in my own chamber, surrounded with light and comfort."

"We cannot, however, always remain free from the government of fancy, or, however wise, always hold ourselves secure

from external impressions," answered Benedict. "You know, Lord Allerdale, that I am not a superstitious man, yet as I crept through those dismal, long deserted rooms, the scene of past years was visibly present,-those infuriated men, that pale, distracted woman, and, more horrible than all, the ghastly, warm, bleeding burthen which we were compelled to be the bearers of,-I saw it, my lord, I saw it, muffled up in the dark mantle, hideously indistinct in form, and stretched before my very feet!"

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"You must indeed have been the fool of fancy, Benedict," said Lord Allerdale, bitterly; "these apprehensions are ominous, no doubt, my old friend, and I should recommend you to pause in the career which we have pursued so successfully -pause now, at the very hour when our dearest projects approach fulfilment. It were so wisely and worthily done, to surrender all we have so terribly fought for at the suggestion of fancies more absurd than any that harass the half-crazed Richard Musgrave himself."

"You are too severe, my lord," answered Benedict. "I meant but to remark how all, even the strongest and boldest among us, are at times overcome by externals; but were I eternally the dupe of these fancies, as in the general way I am wholly free from them, be assured they would not make me falter in the execution of our plans."

"Now you speak more like yourself, Benedict," answered Lord Allerdale. “I should indeed as soon have expected a half-starved tiger to relinquish his prey, as for you to abandon either advancement or your revenge."

your

"I thank your lordship for the comparison, unsavoury as it may sound," retorted Benedict. "There are creatures more odious than the tiger, which is a magnificent brute, let the world say against him what it will."

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Now, then, for the matter in hand, if you please," said Lord Allerdale, not choosing to notice the irritation of manner with which Benedict had last spoken. "About those

documents; when will you procure them ?"

"So soon as Musgrave is thoroughly recovered; he promised me so much, when I saw him in the morning after my unlucky adventure. He says he will procure them himself."

“That I should think unlikely," answered Lord Allerdale, "since he was too much overcome by his absurd superstitions even to traverse those apartments in your company.”

"Even so, my lord," said the lawyer; "there is, however, a position which affords only a choice of evils, and you may be sure I made the most of those which surround Richard Musgrave. I think he will rather himself brave the terrors of those apartments, than abandon them to the investigation of the strangers who may come into possession of the house."

"You have, then, fully possessed him with the belief that it is on sufferance only that he remains yet a little longer the nominal proprietor of Ravenglas?" said Lord Allerdale.

"Most fully, my lord," replied Benedict, "and I carefully concealed from him your lordship's intention of taking entire possession of the house and valuables. I even ventured so far as to say that your large advances to Mr. Musgrave, and the extravagance of Mr. Edmund, had so far impaired your resources, as to make the most rigorous economy necessary, as the sole means of avoiding very serious embarrassment. Your lordship may be satisfied, too, that I lost not so fine an opportunity of enlarging on the generosity of your proposals with regard to Miss Ellinor, who I reminded Mr. Musgrave you were eager, though utterly portionless, to receive as your daughter. I was the more willing to insist upon this point,

because the young lady has chosen to indulge in airs towards myself, which I think very little becoming to her situation."

"Ah, my good Benedict," said Lord Allerdale, with a malignant bitterness of accent, "those dainty airs are a trick which has descended to Ellinor Musgrave from her charming mother, and she must pay the penalty for both-for her mother's insolence no less than for her own."

"Miss Ellinor and Mr. Edmund promise to make an admirably fashionable couple," said Benedict; "they are sublimely indifferent to each other."

"I shall be quite satisfied if that indifference continues,” returned Lord Allerdale; "the marriage of Ellinor with my eldest son has, you know, for years past, been a growing necessity. I hope only that the folly of Edmund may not change her indifference into absolute dislike: his best chance is in the continuance of her indifference towards others, no less than towards himself. Ellinor is a girl of strong imagination and lively feelings; she will never care for Edmund, but so soon as she learns to love another she will hate him. It was that which should have been avoided, and for which I so strongly condemn his folly in introducing at Ravenglas this Lieutenant Conyers, who is a person very likely to captivate a romantic dreaming girl such as Ellinor.”

A bitterly malignant expression settled on the lawyer's features as Lord Allerdale spoke, but his voice sunk almost to a whisper as he replied,

"Your lordship apprehends, I suspect, that the introduction of Miss Musgrave to this young man may prove prejudicial to your projects; and indeed it seems to me that these apprehensions are not incorrect, and the young lady is of a character so determined, that, under the influence of a fancied attachment to this Lieutenant Conyers, she is not

unlikely to refuse altogether to fulfil the contract with Mr. Edmund; and, for my part, I have no faith in that filial affection for her uncle which might prevent such a step; 'tis an old tale how a young lady can abandon even a father in such a case, and what can an uncle expect more? Yet cannot your lordship learn some particulars of this Lieutenant Conyers? A subaltern in a marching regiment, I dare swear that he is poor, and the poor have so many assailable points; nay, he is poor, I am certain, for only the consciousness of poverty could have made a man of his attainments wince, as I observed he did, when Musgrave, with his usual folly upon the subject, asked him from what branch of the Conyers' family he was descended."

"Musgrave asked him that, did he ?" said Lord Allerdale, quickly; "and what, pray, was his reply?"

"Oh !" returned the lawyer, with a sneer, "he was ridiculously embarrassed, and muttered something about his family having been for some two or three generations settled in France; but the topic was so palpably unpleasant to him, that Miss Ellinor, with that amiable courtesy which was quite striking in her conduct towards him, immediately turned the conversation."

It was only as he ceased speaking that the lawyer, who had been trifling with a paper-knife that lay on the table, happened to raise his eyes to the face of Lord Allerdale, and so shocked was he at the fixed, horror-stricken glance of the nobleman's eye, and the livid paleness that overspread his features, that, uttering an exclamation of alarm, he started from his chair, and was about to ring the bell for assistance. Lord Allerdale, however, restrained him, by a motion of his hand. "It is nothing, Benedict," he said; "a strange kind of pain across the heart, which has attacked me two or three