-Childe Harold. A sudden involuntary effort of the memory had nearly cost Flora Wilton her life. In that dreadful moment, when the house in which she had for years resided was a prey to the raging flames, when her own escape--owing to the fearful rapidity with which the fire gained ascendancy--was a question of doubt, she had remembered a packet of papers, which her father had given into her charge, with injunctions to preserve it, even at the hazard of her life. It had been placed by herself in a spot, which though secret, was yet of easy access. To obtain it would be but the act of a minute; the fire-escape conductor had yet to return to convey her from the burning house, to the street below; and she made the attempt simultaneously with the conception of the thought. The room she entered was densely filled with smoke. She obtained the object of her search. She remembered no more. When again consciousness returned to her, she was in the arms of Hal, high in the air, upon a dreadful slope, the ruddy glare of the roaring flames making visible to her the frightful danger of her position. She relapsed into insensibility, and when once more she opened her eyes, she found herself in bed, the motherly face of an elderly woman bending over her, and her wrist in the hand of a white-haired medical attendant, who had himself applied the restoratives which had brought her back to life. A thousand questions thronged to her lips, first wonder, then incoherence, then, with an awakening sense of what had happened, her desolate destitute condition burst with full force upon her, and she fell into a passionate fit of weeping. The soft, kindly voice of the woman at her side was addressed to her in soothing tones, while the strictest injunctions fell from the lips of the doctor, forbidding speech on either side. He recommended Flora to commend herself to God, and then endeavour to sleep, under the conviction that the fearful event in which she had borne so prominent a part had not involved any loss of life. Poor Flora! she had no words at command, no language in which to express the emotions the horrors of the night had occasioned, and she obeyed the doctor’s behest of silence simply because her tongue refused its office. She listened to the exhortations addressed to her, and made a feeble motion to the effect that she would endeavour to comply with the wishes that had been expressed: and so she was left alone. Where was she? She cast her weeping eyes around; but, in the well-furnished room, recognised no object that could enlighten her upon that point. By the aid of the light of the candle, which had been left burning upon a table, she could distinguish everything in the room plainly enough, but there was nothing to tell her whose house she was within. But she had a surmise. Women, quick at assumption, are rarely far wrong in their suppositions.