will not suffer what is inevitable, to destroy hopes that smile so sweetly on us? "Address your answer to Oakley, Helen: write it, if you will, to my mother. Dear and precious as one little line of kindness would be to me, I will not ask it if your proud heart would find it easier to open itself to her than to me. But keep me not long in suspense; before I shall have sealed my letter, I shall feel sick because the answer to it is not come. My regiment is not going abroad. This change in its destination was only known to us on Friday last.--Farewell! How wholly does my fate hang upon your answer! "Ever, ever yours, "WILLIAM HARRINGTON." The destruction of this letter was attended with a feeling of pleasure greatly superior both in quality and extent to that which he received from watching spark after spark die away from the fading embers of poor Fanny's long epistle. That was merely a matter of mawkish sentiment; this was an affair of business. "But Miss Helen shall have a lover, nevertheless." It was thus he ended his cogitation. "My cousin Stephen will not fail me. This evening he will be here with what will make the young lady's hand worth just as much as I please, and no more: and if my worthy cousin likes her, he shall have her." And as he thought these words, a smile curled his lips, and he playfully blackened the paper, and singed it, and finally set it in a blaze, uttering aloud as the flame expired, "A lieutenant-colonel of dragoons _versus_ the Vicar of Wrexhill." CHAPTER IX. THE WILL EXECUTED. The evening was pretty far advanced when at length the house-door bell was loudly rung; and immediately afterwards Mr. Stephen Corbold entered the drawing-room looking more assured, and, as Helen thought, more detestable than ever. Having deliberately sipped his tea, and indulged himself the while in a long steady stare in the face of the unfortunate object of his passion, he at length rose, and with an air of much confidential importance, raising himself on his toes, and playing with his watch-chain, approached Mrs. Cartwright, and whispered something in her ear. "Have the kindness to ring the bell, Mr. Hetherington," said the lady, addressing the curate, who, according to his frequent custom, had taken his tea at the Park, partly for the advantage of receiving the instructions of his principal upon sundry little points of Church and village discipline, and partly for the hope of finding some one among the young ladies less cruel than the inexorable Henrietta, who had never appeared to see him, from the moment they parted in the shrubbery. "Tell Curtis to carry lights to my dressing-room," said Mrs. Cartwright to the servant who answered the bell.