UNABLE to support those ideas, she resolved on repairing to the seat of her nativity, taking with her only those servants particularly belonging to her. Here other emotions were awakened the remembrance of the parents she had lost, of her lord cut off in the bright bloom of manhood, rushed upon her heart, and with it an a gonizing shame at the idea of the little respect she paid their manes in so soon entering upon a new engagement. Her sacred word however was pledged to Edgar. To disipate her melaneholy she strove to raise the passions of vanity and ambition; fruitless wete those efforts; an opperessive sadness marked her as its own, Elfrida, like a young flowreblown on by untimely winds, daily faded. [NO. 9. ted herself before the portraits of her parents; the wildness of sorrow agitated her fancy, and she thought the brave Ordun, and his chaste dame, bending down with an indignant wafture, desired her departure she screamed, the cry drew the affectionate domestics; they raised her from the ground, and wiped off the chilling dews which stole upon her cheek. : Fraught with the superstition of the times, the Baroness resolved on endeavouring to quiet her agonies in fulfilling an awful du ty, by repairing to an abbey two leagues from the castle, and seting the holy fathers to offer up up prayers for the souls of her departed friends. As she made a merit of undertaking this privately, she commanded her attendants not to approach her apartment till summoned; from which, by a small door, she descended at the first glimmering of day, attired in' a One evening's close she prostra-plain, though coloured robe, to avoid the suspicions of passengers of being what she really was. Absorbed in the profoundest meditations, she unwittingly turned into a wrong direction; the path was through a wood wild and perplexed, and she vainly strove to extricate herself. Unused to sojourn alone, fears of dire nature encompassed her. She fled forwards with, precipitation; the clearness of the atmosphere changing, she expected the violence of the impending storm would burst on her unsheltered head. In this moment of dismay her sight was blessed with the view of a female gathering faggots. Sister. said the panting Elfrida, flying to her, hast thou the possibility of affording me refuge till the storm is passed over? The female, whose back was to her, now hastily turned and by a start seemed to express her astonisment at the object before her: nor was Elfrida's less. She was habited in the weeds of a pilgrim, but the coarse guise had not the power to hide the beauties of her form, a gentle fire played in her dark eyes; the winning graces of truth and simplicity overspread her race, while her colourless cheek, with a fragile delicacy, seemed to declare her though in the first dawn of youth, the daughter of affliction. Gentle lady, cried she, in a sweet voice, welcome to the refuge I can afford you. She turned down a little sheltered path which brought them to a kind of grotesque hut, composed of unpolished planks covered over at the top with the foliage of the forest.-Father, said the stranger, entering first, do not chide the chance which led hither this fair guest. Elfrida beheld a man of an emaciated though majestic form; a resistless sweetness was cast over a countenance where care sat deeply engraven; nor could the tear of pity be with-held on viewing those white locks that seemed to require a softer pillow than sorrow for repose. A little boy slept on a bed of rushes on whose lace the mildest beauties of his early state were painted. The female recruited the fire with her small bundle of fresh gathered faggots; involuntary sighs broke from the Baroness— were those delecate hands, she cried, formed only for that rude office, ye Powers!-but who shall dare to murmur at the destiny of thy creatures? She was pressed to partake of a vegetable feast. The old man expressed his surprize at her wandering in that lonesome forest unpro tected. In her turn she assured him that she could not have supposed such valuable inhabitants concealed in it, and that she believed their days had not always rolled on in the obscurity of retirement. And yet Lady, he replied, contentment often dwells in the bosom of obscurity-though rude our station yet virtue spreads a polish around. The bleak winds of winter often strip us of our leafy covering, but there is a soul to warm and support. Lady, thou will perhaps wonder at an old man who avers he would not change this miserable hut for many of the proudest Baron fell by the hand of Edgar in the forest of Harwood: his deception perhaps merited some punishment, but not one of this barbarous nature-unhappy Ethelwald, thou fell like a towering pine of the forest in thy gayest prime, unmourned too by tho e most dear. These eyes, which never beheld thee, weep thy fate: oh may the profligate Edgar, he continued, awfully raising his e seyes find every promised joy be blasted, may destruction snatch the diadem from his head. Oh father, oh beloved, refrain, said his daugh palaces. The tortures too often in-ter, call blights upon the head of curred by a splendid station would be a poor recompence for poverty united to quietness. Can the possession, think you, of a neighbouring seat, known by the title of the Castle of Devon, assuage the guilty horrors of its too beautiful mistress, Ha cried Elfrida, with irrepressable emotions, then suddenly checking herself for fear of a discovery, I thought fame had given her an unsullied character. Alas! replied the old man, 'twas well the noble Ordan and 'his Lady live ed not to witness the declension. Her virtues resisted not the assailments of vanity and ambition, and she consents to wed the murderer of Ethelwald. "What sayest thou, cried Elfrida!" "Tis rumoured, answered he, that the Edgar; he is false, but still must Elfida-tears and kindling blushes spoke the rest. Elfrida in a moment comprehended the mystery, and saw one whom the artifices of Edgar had undone. Thy emotions, he rejoned, have betrayed thee; yet am I mistaken; loking at Elfrida, if contumely will ever proceed from these lips; Thou indeed meritest no shame,the purity of thy soul is unstained, and 'tis on Edgar alone its accumulation should fall. Lady 'tis true, we have not always been secluded in the bosom of this retirement. I shall not enumerate the name or valourous atchievements of my progenitors; right noble was their lineage. I was early left an orphan,hereditary fires animated my breast, though |