'Let me, Mrs Ireton,' eagerly cried Lord Melbury 'have the honour to be Miss Ellis's deputy.'

'No, my lord,' said Juliet, with spirit: 'grateful and proud as I should feel to be honoured with your lordship's assistance, it must not be in a business that does not belong to me. I will deliver the orders to Simon. And as Mrs Ireton is now relieved from her anxiety concerning Mr Loddard, I beg permission, once more, and finally, to take my leave.'

Gravely then courtsying to Mrs Ireton, and bowing her head with an expression of the most touching sensibility to her three young supporters, she quitted the gallery.

[1] 'Oh my loved country!—unhappy, guilty—but for ever loved country!—shall I never see thee more!'

[2] 'Sleep on, sleep on, my angel child! May the repose that flies me, the happiness that I have lost, the precious tranquillity of soul that has forsaken me—be thine! for ever thine! my child! my angel! I cease to call thee back. Even were it in my power, I would not call thee back. I prayed for thy preservation, while yet I had the bliss of possessing thee; cruel as were thy sufferings, and impotent as I found myself to relieve them, I prayed,—in the anguish of my soul,—I prayed for thy preservation! Thou art lost to me now!—yet I call thee back no more! I behold thee an angel! I see thee rescued for ever from sorrow, from alarm, from poverty, and from bitter recollections;—and shall I call thee back, to partake again my sufferings?—No! return to me no more! There, only, let me find thee, where thy felicity will be mine!—but thou! O pray for thy unhappy mother! Let thy innocent prayers be united to her humble supplications, that thy mother, thy hapless mother, may become worthy to join thee!'

[3] 'Alas, Madam! are you, also, deploring the loss of a child?'

[4] 'Ah, my friend! my much loved friend! have I sought thee, have I awaited thee, have I so fervently desired thy restoration—to find thee thus? Weeping over a grave? And thou—dost thou not recollect me? Hast thou forgotten me?—Gabriella! my loved Gabriella!'

[5] 'Gracious heaven! what do I behold? My Juliet! my tender friend? Can it be real?—O! can it, indeed, be true, that still any happiness is left on earth for me!'

[6] 'Ah!—upon me can you, yet, bestow a thought?'