having generally employed the strong meridian light, he found himself suddenly at a loss for occupation. Accordingly, remembering the timid rap of the old steward whose application had met with usual success, and designing afterward to employ himself in the greenhouse, so called, which alone of all his former luxuries he retained, Sir Rohan opened his door, and traversing the hall, partially descended a broad, winding staircase.

III.

MIRIAM.

T was a long time since he had entered these

IT

grand districts of the house, and, closed and deserted, the walls had gathered damp, the panels dust, the whole region a funereal gloom. As he looked down, he saw without surprise, since he had grown incapable of such emotion, that the gay curtains and carpets were dim and faded, the ornaments fallen from their brackets, and thick, silvery, shaking webs woven from cornice to cornice of the long drawing-room. saw without a shudder the rare cast of some antique statue staring sad and forlorn from its nook of tarnished tapestry, like a corpse risen with the mould and mire of the grave upon it; and no question arose in his mind at the wideopen hall door, and the sweet, fresh draught bearing thence through the close rooms. Still look

He

ing down, as if under the influence of another dream that made him motionless, his eye rested on a figure standing by the old clavichord, and he waited till the dream should pass and the spell loosen its chain. A girl, tall and in the gloom, standing by the old clavichord and noiselessly moving her fingers over the stained keys. Had he seen her before?

A singular face, totally destitute of any roseate glow, but by no means wan,- rather, one would say, a soft, creamy skin that should not be otherwise. The chin extremely short and upturned ; the mouth compensating for some width by rich, velvet curves and handsome teeth, the upper lip a haughty, disdainful feature; the nose well moulded, with thin nostrils, and occupying more than its classical third in length. A face whose first impression was one of peculiar loveliness, the next, a captious sentiment that it was greatly too wide; but few, perhaps, saw it without recurring to the first. The forehead was low and wide, the dark masses of hair sweeping off it in a long line, till, dropping with a sudden wave below the cheek, they were looped up again, as Sir Rohan had seen other hair,

across

into a kind of crown-like comb. Eyebrows fine, feuille-morte, and without arch, nearly met this face; and beneath, the long-cut waxen lids were heavily fringed. A gleam of sunlight stole timidly through an open shutter, and then in a broad sheet athwart the face, as Sir Rohan observed it. The girl raised her lids in the abrupt illumination. Square as the outline might be, albeit without the high cheekbones which characterize this class of countenance, it was well worth while if that were necessary to give such purport and range and large magnificence to the eyes, soft, dark, lustrous, and bearing a dazzled splendor at the light, through the golden warmth it imparted to them. Ah, well! Sir Rohan was to paint other eyes to-morrow.

It pleases me to think that that face, now so fair and soft, never lost the smooth, olive skin, even through the season of a long life, nor sowed its cares in wrinkles when they grew too many for the heart to bear alone; nor that those eyes lost their brilliant kindliness, though wearing forever the frightened aspect which one cruel day was to give them, though never, when the snow

Was

of weary years lay between age and youth, daring to look back and sun themselves in the gleam of any lost happiness, though borrowing all their joy from those Beulah hill-tops which only the old have in certain prospect. Yet there was something in the face which led you not so much to its owner as its authors, till you lost yourself conjecturing under what conditions and circumstances it had obtained life. A peculiar face,had Sir Rohan seen it before? it his Ghost, come in tangible form- but was it tangible? Pshaw! did it not flash on him from the travelling-chariot? Did ghosts wear long cloaks half untied and pulling apart from the confining cord; or gowns, just seen beneath, of a fawn brocade, to harmonize with the other brown shades; or antique jewels and a moonstone carcanet? Did ghosts touch the uncompliant keys of clavichords, and entice thence sweet, unfamiliar sounds? Unfamiliar, — only too well known, indeed! Could it be anything but his persistent enemy who played, with the long, slender fingers of her left hand, the very melody to whose tune the sorrow of his life had been this day set? The sunshine that had been