posing myself to make the most of my own resources during a solitary winter, I have had occasion to open a cabinet, containing the journals which I have kept, with few intervals, since my girlhood; and the records of more years than I care to count lie open before me. What shall I do with them? I have, alas! none to whom the legacy would be valuable in itself, and for my sake-dear and precious as are some who love me well, a childless widow, the last of her own family, must not look for that perfect sympathy which invests every word written by a beloved hand with an almost sacred character. There is too much of deep and painful interest to others recorded in these pages to permit of their falling, perhaps, into careless or unworthy hands. And yet I can

not make my mind up to

destroy the only

outward memorial of times long past, and events which all but I have probably forgotten.

What is to be done with my old journal?

I believe that the life of every human being faithfully recorded, with its hopes, its sorrows, and its failings, would furnish lessons of momentous import to many a fellow creature subject to like grief, and struggling with the same sinful nature; and any one with courage thus to anatomise his own heart for the public good deserves well of his species. But I have not that courage, and my joys and sorrows have always been so closely interwoven with those of others, that I could not, if I would, lay bare many a passage of my own life, without intruding into some other inner life whose secrets are not mine to disclose.

Yet I feel that in some way this record, which has employed many happy and peaceful hours, and won me from sad thoughts in many times of heaviness and sorrow, should not perish altogether, or the time employed upon. it will have been altogether wasted. Some part, then, of the solitary winter before me shall be

devoted to extracting and arranging such portions of my journal as may prove of sufficient interest to others, without going too deeply into my own feelings. I shall thus live over the past, and forget, in the dear recollection of sweet companionship, my present solitude. And when Vivia sees my amended journal, if she does not approve of it, there will be time enough to burn it.

It seems a very odd thing to say, but the more I read in my old journal, the more convinced I become of the fact, that with one sad exception, I have never played the principal part in my own life. I have had many a joy, and full many a grief, too; but they have been ever more the joys and griefs of others; and I seem to have lived beside the events in which others have been the chief actors, sympathising, indeed, looking on with a smiling face, or a bleeding heart, but yet, as I said before, a subordinate personage. Perhaps I am thence

better qualified to record the scenes in which I have only been an accessory. The old proverb concerning "lookers-on" is full of truth, as all old proverbs are. And those whose hearts are very full of love for others, and who have been called on to see the beings dearest to them suffer from griefs in which they also had a share, will agree with me, that the sight of sorrow which we are helpless to remove is one of the heaviest of life's trials. They who can feel this will also acknowledge that the purest and deepest joy is felt in "rejoicing with them that do rejoice."

For these reasons, and also because the earlier volumes of my journal are much less full of detail on incidental matters than those written when I had acquired the habit of recording events, I shall pass lightly over my own youthful days, and merely give the outline necessary to render my connection with those who will play the prominent part in this history intelligible to the reader.

CHAPTER II.

I WAS an orphan of some twelve years of age, with an only brother many years older than myself, when I first became acquainted with my dear friend, Eleanor Bertie. At my poor father's death, his affairs were found to be in a state of great confusion, and Lord Coningsburgh, our guardian, after a long and patient investigation, saw nothing for it but that Philip should exchange out of the Guards into a regiment going to India, and leave his estate in trust for a term of years; while I, on whom my mother's slender portion had been settled, was sent to a country boarding school, with the understanding that my holidays