"Such, Isabel," continued he, "is the present condition of him, who must again owe his life to your pity. I have no home, but one occupied by a mother, engaged in plots for the destruction of her husband, and determined to render her son the creature of an ambitious hypocrite, rather than serve whom, he would die. I cannot join my father, for that would be to add a second victim to the one, whom Cromwell has resolved to expose to the sharpest ordeal. My hereditary claim to rank and title is now merely the vision of a shadow, for I know it is the secret intention of the fanatics to abolish the Peers as a political body, and estates are now held by permission rather than right, nor are the possessors secure of their inheritance for a single day. Greatness is thus reduced to the bare simplicity of individual desert. In you, Isabel, I see the genuine loveliness of unsophisticated virtue, the qualities of fortitude, discretion, and sincerity, which these arduous times peculiarly require. At present I have had little opportunity to shew you my character, but let me intreat permission to be sheltered under your uncle's roof, till I can arrange some plan for my future conduct, and shew you more of the heart which is irrevocably yours." The plea of anxious distress revived all the tenderness of Isabel; and he whom, she believed, she could reject as the heir of a coronet, and the favourite of an Usurper, became the object of inviolable attachment when viewed as an outcast, seeking an asylum from the misfortunes brought on him by the crimes of his parents. Considering it to be her duty, she explained his situation to her uncle and aunt, and they agreed that it would be inhuman to deny him the refuge he craved. But still, as he was at present rather a probationary than an assured penitent, and in some points of view an object of suspicion, Dr. Beaumont felt it would be endangering his own security to converse with him freely on political topics. Still more hazardous would it be to admit him to a participation of their family-secrets, and at this time there was one which engrossed their minds, and threw an unusual air of mystery and anxious solicitude into Isabel's behaviour. [1] Especially Bishop Sanderson. CHAP. XVII. To her direct thy looks; there fix thy praise, And gaze with wonder there. The life I gave her Oh! she has used it for the noblest ends! To fill each duty; make her father feel The purest joy, the heart dissolving bliss, To have a grateful child. Murphy.