'My father! O my father!'

'Your father is Sir Peter Blakely's friend,' replied I, 'and he will not break the pledge he has given him. With his return, Catherine, my hopes and life perish together. Now only can you save yourself—now only can you save me. Fly with me!—be mine, and your father's blessing will not be withheld. Hesitate now, and farewell happiness.'

She hastily raised her head from my breast, she stood proudly before me, and, casting her bright blue eyes upon mine, with a look of piercing inquiry, said—

'Edward! what would you have me to do? Deep as my love for you is—and I blush not to confess it—would you have me to fly with you accompanied by the tears of blighted reputation—followed by the groans and lamentations of a heart-broken father—pointed at by the finger of the world as an outcast of human frailty? Would you have me to break the last cord that binds to existence the only being to whom I am related on earth—for whom have I but my father? My hand I shall never give to another; but I cannot, I will not leave my father's house. If Catherine Forrester has gained your love, she shall not forfeit your esteem. I may droop in secret, Edward, as a bud broken on its stem, but I will not be trampled on in public as a worthless weed.'

'Nay, my beloved, mistake me not,' returned I—'when the lamb has changed natures with the wolf, then, but not till then, could I breathe a thought, a word in your presence, that I would blush to utter at the gate of Heaven. Within two days, your father and his intended son-in-law will return, and the father's threats and tears will subdue the daughter's purpose. Catherine will be a wife!—Edward a——

'Speak not impiously,' she cried, imploringly—'what—what can we do?'

'The present moment only is left us,' replied I. 'To-night, become the wife of Edward Fleming, and happiness will be ours.'

Her pulse stood still; the blood rushed into her face and back to her heart, while her bosom heaved, and her cheeks glowed with the agony of incertitude, as she resolved and re-resolved.

But wherefore should I tire you with a recital of what you already know. That night, my Catherine became my wife. For a few months her father disowned us; but when the fortunes of the Prince began to ripen, through his instrumentality we were again received into his favour. Yet I was grieved to hear, that, in consequence of our marriage, Sir Peter Blakely's mind had become affected; for, while I detested him as a rival, I was compelled to esteem him as a man.

But now, Lewis, comes the misery of my story. You are aware that, before I saw my Catherine, I was a ruined man. Youthful indiscretions—but why call them indiscretions?—rather let me say my headlong sins—before I had well attained the age of manhood, contributed to undermine my estate, and the unhappy political contest in which we were engaged had wrecked it still more. I had ventured all that my follies had left me upon the fortunes of Prince Charles. You know that I bought arms, I kept men ready for the field, I made voyages to France, I assisted others in their distress; and, in doing all this, I anticipated nothing less than an earldom, when the Stuarts should again sit on the throne of their fathers. You had more sagacity, more of this world's wisdom; and you told me I was wrong—that I was involving myself in a labyrinth from which I might never escape. But I thought myself wiser than you. I knew the loyalty and the integrity of my own actions, and with me, at all times, to feel was to act. I had dragged ruin around me, indulging in a vague dream of hope; and now I had obtained the hand of my Catherine, and I had not the courage to inform her that she had wed that of a ruined man.