therefore, she could not look as a friend, in her difficulty; his affection could be indeed counted upon, but it could be exercised in her favour only at the price of his ruin. As for Miss Falconer, though she loved her well, she knew that _her_ spirit was entirely with her brother, and that she encouraged, and did all she could to promote, the match, for his especial benefit, as a means of weaning him from a gay and dissolute career, which threatened, if not speedily checked, to terminate in confirmed profligacy. With feelings of this kind constantly weighing upon her breast--a consciousness ever present, that in the death of an only and beloved brother, she had lost a friend to whom she might have unbosomed herself in grief, and from whom she might have expected sympathy and relief,--it is not extraordinary that the kindness even of a stranger, expressed ever with delicacy and gentleness, and uttered not so much in words as actions, should make a strong and enduring impression upon her feelings, and that she should bestow upon him the frankest evidences of regard. "Ne evil thing she fear'd, ne evil thing she meant." A circumstance--and it was the only one--which seemed at first to threaten a speedy interruption of their good understanding, served in the end even to strengthen her confidence and friendship. In an unguarded moment, and while under a strong impulse, the young man alluded to the approaching nuptials, and that in a manner so plainly indicative of his knowledge of Catherine's feelings, and of the sacrifice she was to be compelled to make, that she was justly alarmed and offended. She felt as a woman, that this was an indecorum and presumption of the most unpardonable nature; and the reproof it brought upon the offender's head, was the stronger for being mingled with the tears of humiliation. But even this was forgiven, when several days elapsed without bringing the youth back to the mansion, and she reflected how much his offensive intermeddling must have been caused by the sympathy she was ever so glad to possess. She was really rejoiced, when her father, astounded and concerned, and finally enraged, at the unaccountable absence of his favourite, sought him out, and dragged him, almost by force of arms, to the mansion, and she heard his footsteps once more sounding on the porch; and Herman soon perceived that she had discharged from her mind all anger, if not all remembrance of his ungoverned zeal, and was disposed to treat him with as much confidence as before. In truth, she was one of the few we meet in the world, and perhaps as seldom even in woman as man, of that angelic quality of spirit, which mingles inaptness to take offence with the greatest readiness to forgive it; and as all he had said was made offensive not so much by its nature as by the position of the offender himself, and would have been proper in the case of a near kinsman or old and familiar friend,