was not till after she had parted with her son—not till she felt the blank impression of his last embrace lingering on her bosom, and thought of him as an absent being, whom it would be long before she saw again—that his final words had their full force upon her mind. Those words, like a sweet tune heard in a crowd with indifference, but which afterwards in solitude steals into and melts the soul, then revived upon her mind, and were pondered upon for days afterwards with a deep and unaccountable sadness of spirit. It now only remained that he should take leave of his mistress. She was in the garden when he arrived, and no sooner did she obtain a glimpse of his person, than she ran gaily and swiftly towards him, with a face beaming with joy, exclaiming that she had such good news to tell him as he had not ever heard before. This turned out, upon inquiry, to be the permission of her father that their nuptials should take place that day month. The intelligence fell upon Bruce’s heart like a stab, and it was some moments ere he could collect himself to make an appropriate answer. Lady Clementina observed his discomposure, and, with a half-alarmed feeling, asked its cause. He explained it as occasioned by regret for his necessary absence in Scotland, to which he was called by some very urgent business, so as to render it necessary that the commencement of their mutual happiness should be put off for some time longer. “Thus,” he said, “to be obstructed by an affair of my own, after all the objections of others had been removed with so much difficulty, is particularly galling.” The disappointment of the young lady was more deeply felt than it was strongly expressed. She was reassured, however, by a fervent and solemn promise from her lover, that, as soon as possible, he would return to make her his own. After taking leave of her parents, he clasped her in one last fond embrace, during which every moment seemed an age of enjoyment, as if all the felicity of which he was about to be defrauded had been concentrated and squandered in that brief space. At one moment, he felt the warm pressure of a being beloved above all earthly objects, and from whom he had expected a whole life of happiness; at another, he had turned away towards the emptiness of desolation, and the cold breath of the grave. One hour did he give to reflection upon all he left behind—an hour such as those which sometimes turn men’s hair gray—the next, and all after it, he devoted to the enterprise upon which he was entering. Crawford, whom he requested to become his second, readily agreed to accompany him for that purpose; and they immediately set out for the Netherlands, leaving a challenge for Sackville in the hands of a friend, along with directions as to the proposed place of meeting.