THE "GOINGS ON" AT BRAMSBY HALL. 291 



ladies, sitting, or rather reclining, on the sofa; one hand, drawn 

 through his straight hair, was forcibly pressed on his forehead, with 

 the other on his breast ; he seemed as if struggling to restrain the 

 vivid beating of his heart. Bessy was by his side, her dark eyes 

 flashing, her lip trembling, and her dress in disorder. She rose as 

 we entered, and my aunt, with a look that told well what her sus- 

 picions were, seized the vacant seat on the sofa. That look spoke a 

 domestic history ; I knew what had changed my uncle from a tyrant 

 to a slave. 



" You are lost in thought, Edward Le Grange," she said, placing 

 herself close to him. 



" Madam !" he ejaculated, with a start, as if then only aware of 

 our presence. 



" I only observed that you seemed to be wrapt in your own re- 

 flections." 



" Seemed ! " he replied in an under -tone, meant rather for her than 

 the public, " would it were, seemed ! Oh, God ! oh, God ! for years, 

 for ages at least it seems ages have I striven with the thoughts that 

 are within me and around me ; but no, it will not be. I have flut- 

 tered with the gay crowd 'twas vain ; what to me was their worship 

 and their flatteries ? I have sought the solitudes of nature ; the same 

 dark thought was there. Death have I courted ; alas ! death is only 

 for the happy. Down, down, juggling fiend !" 



" Do not talk thus, Edward," whimpered out the milliner, te do 

 not, I implore you for your own sake for mine," she added in a 

 whisper, " strive to be happy." 



" Happy, happy ; oh ! no, no, no ! Yet I thank you you have in- 

 deed a soul for friendship, a look that can almost make misery smile. 

 Ah ! had it been my lot ." What followed I know not, as the male 

 lips were now too near the female ear to admit of my catching a word. 

 " Is it possible," I said, turning to Bessy, who as well as myself 

 was slily occupied with what was passing on the sofa, " is it possible 

 that you can be taken in by such a soap-bubble of affectation, such a 

 namby-pamby villain as that ?" She made no answer. " I have 

 seen ten thousand such fellows," I continued ; " they are to be found 

 behind the counter by day, and haunt the outskirts of boarding- 

 schools by night ; on holidays you may see them reading Byron 

 under the shade of directing-posts at the crossways j they would have 

 you think that they are haunted by the consciousness of some fearful 

 crime the demon of thought, as they term it ; but you will find, on 

 inquiry, that they have done nothing more terrible than filch silver 

 from the till, or perhaps dip their fingers in the treacle-barrel." 

 She took my offered hand as I spoke, and was about to reply, but 

 my aunt had finished her conference with Mr. Le Grange, and 

 my uncle had disentangled the silk with which he had been for 

 some time engaged in a remote corner of the room. Tea was brought 

 round, the conversation became general, and of course uninteresting. 

 For the next fortnight a succession of visitors at the Hall prevented 

 me from holding any private conversation with the 'squire. They 

 were relations of his wife (poor of course), and not seeing wine often 

 they drank deeply when they had it, so that after dinner we had not 



