It was a pity, for she had been an angel of peace to Gertrude. She had taught the husband and wife to know one another, and the knowledge might soon become affection. Yet her hostess confessed to herself that the resolution was correct, even though she was ignorant of the conversation which had immediately inspired it. She did not so much as attempt to delay its execution, and the same afternoon found Helen once more an inmate of Mr. Peach's modest, but pleasant and pretty dwelling. Comfort followed her there. Rereworth's letter to Polydore Riches came to revive hope, and to bring oblivion of the affronts and menaces of the morning. The news exhilarated the chaplain's drooping spirits, and inclined him to regard the elopement with less severity. And Helen thought with gratitude of the writer, and perhaps remembered those readings of Scott and Byron in Mrs. Winston's little drawing-room. Besides this, the fugitives were now approaching the metropolis, and might possibly arrive the same night. Here were copious sources of conversation to fill the evening when the chaplain talked with Helen in the pleasant parlour, where she had sat during the past winter, and which had witnessed the extinction of all those hopes, so long and so fondly cherished at Trevethlan Castle, the day-dreams of Merlin's Cave. If Mrs. Pendarrel inflicted much pain in her short interview with Helen, she did not quit it herself unscathed. The sight of her portrait aroused a thousand recollections, familiar indeed to Esther's hours of reverie, but never so vividly presented before. She thought of the day when she permitted that miniature to be taken from her neck. In the morning she hung it there, not without an idea that it might pass into another's possession before night. Often had the favour been solicited by the lover, and as often refused by the coquette. But at last assiduity might triumph over waywardness. Side by side they strolled over the lawns of Pendarrel, enjoying converse such as is only derided by the unhappy wights who have never shared it. There was a secluded little pool, formed by the rivulet which murmured through the wilderness, surrounded by flowering shrubs, and over-arched so closely by spreading forest-trees, that the sunshine scarcely penetrated to the surface of the water. It was in that bower, under the thickest of the leafy canopy, that Henry Trevethlan detached the miniature from the chain by which it hung, and his lips met those of Esther in the first kiss of love. How well she remembered it now! Every little circumstance, the attitude in which they stood, the few whispered words, came back to her mind, fresh as the things of yesterday. A bright-winged butterfly alighted for a moment upon her wrist, and he called her Psyche, his soul, without whom he should die. The butterfly rested but a second--was its flight ominous of what had occurred since? And had he virtually died? Had his