Over the chimney-piéce in the library in which I was seated, I observed the portrait of a lady, so beautiful, yet with such a melancholy countenance, that it increased the sadness I already endured. I felt sure it must be that of his wife of her who was my predecessor here.

He had not once looked at it on entering. How heartless! This portrait reminded me that he was a father; and its sweet, mournful expression occasioned me to experience a deep interest with regard to her child.

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She, too," thought I, "has been here neglected, and, like me, abandoned to solitude. She, perhaps, loved him, and wept in agony the neglect that pains me so little : she was, therefore, more wretched." And again I looked at that beautiful face, the eyes of which seemed to return my glance with mild pensiveness. There are some hearts in which the germ of melancholy is implanted

even from their earliest youth, and maturity only strengthens it. On such persons, the inevitable ills of life fall with a weight that, if it crush them not wholly, leaves them eternally bruised in spirit. Such a spirit was hers on whose resemblance I gazed with an interest that no portrait ever before excited in me. Every thing in that pale, lovely face announces it. Yes; I will be kind to her child; that sweet, appealing look pleads not in vain.

I experience a strange feeling in this house, as though I were an intruder; whichever way I turn, I see around me all the indication that I have taken another's place. The house was fitted up to receive Lady Annandale as a bride; her cipher, intermingled with flowers and gold arabesques, ornaments all the furniture in the apartments appropriated to me, the gloss scarcely off them; and she-in her grave, and I-in her place. And yet the

separation caused by death appears to me less terrible than the moral divorce of two hearts that ought to love, but cannot sympathise. She on whose portrait I gaze is not more separated from him than I am. An inseparable barrier, that of indifference, divides us, but he heeds it not: the heart is a possession he seeks not to acquire. There is a picture of her in every room. He must have loved, or have fancied that he loved her yet now he seems to think of her no more than if she had never existed, while I can think of nothing else. How can we forget those dear to us, and lost? Methinks that,

From out the grave of every friend we loved
Springs up a flower (as fabulists relate,
Arose from the red stream of Ajax's wound);
Memory 'tis named; and, watered by our tears,

It lives and grows, until its fibres strike
Into the heart, nor leave it until death.

No; I was mistaken when I said he must have loved her. There is an indelicacy and insensibility in this parade of all the memorials

of his first wife, that prove he could never have loved either of us. If I loved him, I could not bear all these mementos of another; and, even as it is, when he stoops to kiss my brow, I find myself unconsciously looking at her picture, as if I expected it would betray some symptom of dissatisfaction. When he returned home, which was not until four o'clock in the morning, he hardly apologised, either for the length of his absence, or the unseasonableness of his return.

He was, as he always is, in high spirits; (how I dislike a person that is always in high spirits!) seemed elated by his encounter with his different friends, and talked of the parties he had arranged for me; an endless succession, it would appear, of dinners, balls, and

soirées. I asked, where was his child? and he

Oh, by the by, I quite forgot poor little St. Aubyn. He is at Richmond, for he has been ailing-cutting his teeth, or afflicted by some other of the endless maladies to which children are subject."

I will go to

And this man is a father! Richmond to-morrow, and see this poor child, who shall not, while I live, want a mother. I already love, because I pity it; and shall derive from it more pleasure than from all the gaieties which its parent has promised to obtain for me.

Ever your affectionate

AUGUSTA.