ence, are burdensome to me: you must believe it. With you, company and solitude each in its turn, pleased me; but in this state of isolation all is suffering. If you knew what I endure when I see wives with their husbands, mothers with their children; when they talk to me of their homes; when they put a thousand questions to me, that seem so natural in speaking of a husband and of one's children!"

The following relates to Mdlle. Deluzy:-"It is long since I have written, and my position since then has grown much worse; Mdlle. D. reigns without a rival. There never was, so far as appearances are concerned, a governess in so scandalous a position. Believe me, this line of conduct is a great misfortune-ay, a great evil, since all her intercourse, so familiar with you, and her authority over the household, show that she is a person who thinks herself placed above every observance of propriety. With her all is vanity, love of rule, dominion, and pleasure. Even a fraternal intimacy, such as I am to believe it, is in the highest degree indecorous in her position as regards you, and at your respective ages. What an example for young people, showing them that it is nothing for a female twenty-eight years old to go with permitted access in and out, at all hours, of the room of a man of thirtyseven! to receive him in deshabille-to have private interviews with him for whole evenings--to order her own furniture, and to arrange excursions, parties of pleasure, and so forth. She has broken with all her friends, in order to have more leisure, and more completely to monopolise your society; she always finds means to get rid of the children. Had she not the face to say to me, I regret, madame, that I cannot be a mediator between you and the duke; but for your own sake I would advise you to be careful how you behave

towards me. I can understand that it must be painful to you to be separated from your children; but after the positive determination of the duke in that respect, I feel he must have had top weighty reasons in having adopted such a line of action, not to consider it my bounden duty to act conformably.'

"Is it possible that your wife, who has always been pure who has never thought of any save your children, and yourself especially, is it possible that she should be obliged to hear herself thus insulted by the governess of your children—a woman whom you have known but a few months, and of whom you at first spoke ill? You fear lest I should corrupt my own children, and you trust them to one who mocks at all propriety, who tramples it beneath her feet, who regards all religious observances as superstitions. You are in such a state of irritation that you will not listen to me, and will not understand me. I do not say to you, as you have always imagined, that Mdlle. D. is your mistress to the full extent of the word; that supposition, in face of your children, is too revolting; but you do not see that in the eyes of the world her intimacy with you and her absolute control in the household give her the open appearance of being such. Do you not comprehend my grief at beholding my children, torn from their mother, to be completely abandoned to a person who ignores that virtue has its external forms, and should never put on the semblance of vice?"

The following passage is a harrowing outburst of suffering: "Oh! my agony is slow and cruel! Oh! never, never will you know, never will you comprehend what your poor Fanny has endured-she who loved you dearly-who so dearly loved your children. Alas! it seems to me as if I had suffered so much that I have ceased to love you. I am not

angry with you, I forgive you; I am convinced it is not altogether your fault; you are too easy, but I have borne so much! I have trusted in you so long in vain! You are no longer for me the Theobald whom I thought the best of men. Towards others you are still so, but to me-how hard and how unjust? Why have I so long looked upon you as so superior a being? Since you must be under female rule, why did I not at least try to obtain that influence over you? You would have been much happier, for, the life you now lead cannot be all enjoyment without some remorse from the thought of the pangs you force me to endure. And my children my poor children! taught to consider their mother a contemptible burden! Oh, it is horrible! yes, I have been very wrong in renouncing for a moment the sacred duties of a mother in the hope of winning you back to me. God has punished me. I every day reproach myself for my cowardice in having tolerated the position, truly scandalous, of Mdile. D.; for in this world we can only judge from appearances, and in this case they are as shameful as it is possible for them to be."

The following is an extract from a letter (probably the last she ever wrote) addressed by the duchess to her husband, and found in her desk at Vaux-Praslin after she had perished by his hand: "If by your threats," writes the miserable, brokenhearted creature, "you wish me to understand a divorce, you should recollect that the initiative is not with yourself. For years you have treated me without esteem, without regard. You are free, but you bring up your children in alienation from their mother, in contempt of her; you abandon them to a woman who cajoles you, whose manners are corrupt. I must confess I think you a little singular in being angry when

for once I endeavor to escape from this detestable kind of life. You seek pretexts against my journey. So long as I had a husband, children, and a home, I was happy, and never thought of quitting them; now that you have robbed me of them, I own that I am thinking of escape from this hell, for surely there are no words that can express the tortures that I endure."

The presentiment of the poor duchess as to her approaching death a death unnatural that killed for loving-was only too true, but she was wrong as to her place of sepulture. Her murdered remains lie away from the vaults of the Château Praslin: they are entombed near the heart of her mother, at Olmetta, the residence of the Sebastianis in Corsica.

THE UNLAWFUL GIFT.

THE chastened glory of a bright autumnal evening was shining upon the yellow harvest fields of Bursley Farm, in the vicinity of the New Forest, and tinting with changeful light the dense but broken masses of thick wood which skirted the southern horizon, when Ephraim Lovegrove, a care-cankered, worn-out, dying man, though hardly numbering sixty years, was, at his constantly and peevishly-iterated request, lifted from the bed, on which for many weeks he had been gradually and painfully wasting away, and carried in an arm-chair to the door. From the cottage, situated as it was upon an eminence, the low-lying lands of Bursley, and its straggling homestead, which once called him master, could be distinctly seen. The fading eyes of the old man wandered slowly over the gleaming landscape, and a faint smile of painful recognition stole upon his harsh and shriveled features. His only son, a fine handsome young fellow, stood silently with his wife, beside him-both, it seemed, as keenly, though not perhaps as bitterly, impressed with the scene and the thoughts it suggested; and their child, a rosy youngster of about five years of age, clung tightly to his mother's gown, frightened and awed apparently by the stern expression he read upon his father's face. A light summer air lifted the old man's thin white locks, fanned his sallow cheeks, and momently revived his fainting spirit. "Ay," he muttered, "the old pleasant home, Ned,