peared in both the Brighton newspapers. The third-rate inn, where Violante Woodhurst lay, was besieged by kind enquirers of every class, and the answer given was, that the young actress had caught the scarlet fever of the child she had saved, and that her recovery was considered very doubtful.

It was more than a month before she was sufficiently restored to make her début, in the meantime, to support her expenses, and to keep her alive in the public interest, Mr. Merryweather had, at the suggestion of some benevolent patrons of the theatre, allowed her, though still absent, a benefit night, which was crowded to excess, and realised a handsome

sum.

And now exquisitely dressed-conscious of popularity-and trembling with a thousand sweet and new emotions Violante Woodhurst appeared before a house crammed to the very ceiling, and as the shouts and clamours of applause met her from all sides when her young

and lovely person first appeared she, with an emotion graceful and touching, because genuine and spontaneous, covered her face with her hands and wept.

Recovering her composure during the tumultuous applause, which her grace and beauty increased tenfold, Violante Woodhurst, led forward by the good-humoured manager, made several low and graceful curtsies to the audience, with her hand pressed upon her bosom to express at once her agitation and her gratitude. As she came forth, and the full light fell upon her face and form, an exclamation of surprise burst from Mrs. Orde and her daughters, and the former whispered:

"Good heavens it is Violet Woodville !"

The girls, amazed and but half convinced, waited till they had heard her sweet voice and ringing laugh in colloquy with Lady Capulet and the Nurse, and then both agreed, that it must indeed be Violet Woodville, for that it was more likely their little village play

mate should have grown and ripened into so much beauty, than that any other person should have the arch glance, the peculiar smile, and the sweet clear voice of Violet. The similarity of the name too confirmed their conviction, (changed only enough to escape observation)— Violet's mysterious disappearance, long a source of anxiety and alarm, was now explained, and while the young actress, far too much engrossed by her part, and with the magic of genius so identifying herself with Juliet, that she distingushes no one among the audience, goes though that most exquisite lovescene in our language (the meeting with Romeo in her father's garden,) we will rapidly recount what we know of her history, and its connection with Mrs. Orde and her daughters.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SQUIRE.

THE Woodvilles were a family of great claims to antiquity, but of very small means-Having always ranked as gentry, they were too proud to embark in trade, agriculture, or any other means of increasing their very slender resources. The house they lived in, very low, rambling and delapidated, had been a manor-house. For many centuries it had been in the possession of the ancestors of the present occupants; but

formerly broad lands and good farms had formed part of the property, and enabled the Woodvilles of the olden time to keep the place up, to live in good style, and to mix with the society of the country round. Families seldom, if ever, remain at a stand-still, either they are rising, money-getting, thrifty people, adding gradually acre to acre and hundred to hundred, or they are a sinking, money-spending, wasteful race, and losing field after field and hundred after hundred, till often the descendents of a line of proud squires, who owned and gave their name to village or to hamlet, are to be found (if industriously traced out) in the Sons of the Soil,' tilling for hire, the very land their forefathers held as Lords-nothing left of their former grandeur, but a vague tradition, growing fainter and fainter, while their very name, (as if ashamed of its degradation,) is glad to conceal itself in the errors of orthography and of pronunciation, with which ignorance has obscured it.