his only daughter might enable her to make. Beauty to a very rare degree she possessed—nor beauty alone; her mind was unusually cultivated, and her manners singularly fascinating. You guess already?” “Yes. Percival saw here one with whom he did not _fall_ in love, but for whom he _rose into love_. He found his ideal.” “Exactly so. I need not say that the father gave him all encouragement. Percival was on the point of proposing, when he received a letter from Mr Gerrard (to whom he had written, some weeks before, communicating the acquaintance he had made, and the admiration he had conceived); and the letter, written under great excitement, revealed the object of Gerrard’s hopeless attachment. Of Irish family himself, he had known this young lady from her childhood—and from her childhood loved her. He had been permitted to hope by Lord ——, who was at that time in a desperate struggle to conceal or stave off his ruin, and who did not scruple to borrow from his daughter’s suitor all that he could extract from him. Thus, when the final crash came, Lord ——’s ruin involved nearly the whole of Gerrard’s patrimony; and, of course, Lord —— declared that a marriage was impossible between two young persons who had nothing to live upon. It was thus that Edmund Gerrard had become an exile. “This intelligence at once reversed the position of the rivals. From that moment Percival devoted himself to bless the life of the man who had saved his own. How he effected this object I scarcely know; but Lord —— gave his consent to Gerrard’s suit, and lived six years longer with much pomp and luxury in Paris. Gerrard settled with his wife in Percival’s Irish castle, and administers Percival’s Irish estates, at a salary which ranks him with the neighbouring gentry. But Percival never visits that property—I do not think he would trust himself to see the only woman he ever loved as the wife of another, though she is no longer young, and is the mother of children, whose future fortunes he has, doubtless, assured.” “What you tell me,” said I, with emotion, “is so consistent with Tracey’s character that it gives me no surprise. That which does surprise me is, not the consent of the ruined father, but the consent of the accomplished daughter. Did Percival convince himself that she preferred his rival?” “That is a question I can scarcely answer. My own belief is, that her first fancy had been caught by Gerrard, and that she had given him cause to believe that that first fancy was enduring love; but that, if her intimate acquaintance with Percival had continued longer, and had arrived at a stage at which his heart had been confessed to her, and her own heart frankly wooed, the first fancy would not have proved enduring love. But the acquaintance did not reach to that stage; and I have always understood that her marriage has been a very happy one.” “In that happiness Tracey is consoled?”