father, when I was down stairs, to take her home, poor thing!" Footsteps being now heard, her ladyship also thought fit to assume a bland tone, and turning to Mary, said, "My good girl, now do go home; one of the servants shall go with you; you see it's all a mistake; this gentleman is Lord de Clifford, my son, and we know nothing at all about this here William Dale that you've been a talking about." Mary neither spoke nor moved, but surveyed the old lady's withered and hypocritical visage with ineffable contempt. At any other time, both mother and son would have resented such conduct in a very summary and arbitrary manner; but, as the artificers of her ruin, they were in her power, and they felt it, to say nothing of vulgar, spurious pride like theirs being always mortgaged with a counterpoise of meanness and cowardice. A telegraphic look now passed between them, upon which her ladyship advanced, and affectionately placed her hand upon Mary's arm; but the poor lowborn serf" started at the touch, and shook her off as though a serpent had stung her. 66 "Poor thing!" resumed the ancient dissembler, in a tone of counterfeit feeling that a Jesuit might have envied; "poor thing, it is easy to see how her wits wander." 66 "So much so," said Mary, in a tone of withering scorn, that, had I not known you by repute these eighteen years, I might almost believe, from your manner now, that you had some touch of human feeling." "'Pon my word, this is too inso-" "My dearest mother," interrupted her amiable son (for a knock was now heard at the door), "you must make allowances for insanity." This last word was uttered at the top of his voice as he added, “ Come in,” to the person at the door, and a footman entered, saying, "Lee, the carpenter, is in the passage, my lord." "Tell him to come in." The old man entered with a pale and agitated face. Servant, my lady, servant, my lord; I fear my poor girl, from her dreadful affliction, may have frightened you," said he, walking kindly up to Mary, who held out her hand to him. "Make no apologies, my good fellow," dulcified Lord de Clifford; adding, as he turned up his eyes," madness is indeed an awful dispensation of Providence." "Father," said Mary, solemnly, as she walked resolutely into the midst of the assembled group, which now only consisted of her father, Lord de Clifford, and his mother, who, with her usual prudence, had desired Beryl to leave the room; "Father, I am not mad; I have been mad, and I may be so again, but I am not mad now; and the man you have sought night and day, that you have watched for early and late, that you have left all things to seek, till all things have left you, that man now stands before you! that man is not William Dale, but Lord de Clifford !". The old man turned from what he thought the distempered ravings of his afflicted child with a look of hopeless wretchedness to the author of it all, who pityingly shrugged his shoulders and sighed out, "Poor thing!" Again Mary repeated more solemnly and collectedly than before, "I am not mad, father; under the assumed name of William Dale, and in the pretended guise of a farmer's son, that man wrought your temporal and my eternal ruin; before you he affects to pity me; but when I was alone with him, not half an hour ago, there was no threat, however mean and brutal, he did not use towards me. You still think I rave; look at his features, and look at my child's; that child has, as you know, the mark of a strawberry on the right side of his throat; so has that man, and I challenge him to show it, I dare him to deny it." "Do, my lord, have the goodness to humour her, by showing her that you have no strawberry on your throat," asked old Lee, imploringly; but mother and son now lost their temper at being driven, as it were, into a corner, from which they could see no chance of escape except by bullying and bravado.. 66 Really, 'pon my soul, this is going a little too far, my friend," said Lord de Clifford. "There's no knowing what length your daughter's insanity may reach next, and I really cannot comply with any proposition so absurd." The poor carpenter looked at the great man with somewhat of the contempt that his daughter had previously bestowed upon him; and this refusal on his part did more to convince Lee of Mary's sanity than anything she could have done or said. 66 'No, depend upon it, he will not show it," resumed Mary, calmly; "but there is something that I will and can show, that may convince you that William Dale and Lord de Clifford are one and the same person;" and, as she spoke, she drew from her pocket the lettercase, out of which she took the letter addressed to her by William Dale, and taking from her bosom the list Lord de Clifford had written out and signed for Howell and James, she handed them to her father, saying, "Compare these two hands as minutely as you will, and you'll find the one an exact copy of the other." As Lee received them, the dowager, being through passion thrown completely off her guard, made a snatch at them, but he held them tightly above his head. "Your ladyship must excuse me," said he; "you, I am inclined to think, need no proofs of your son's guilt; I do; to me they may be useful;" and so saying, he walked to the window and compared the two writings, which were indeed fac-similes. When the examination was over, the old man groaned aloud, and walking up to Mary, drew her arm within his own. "Poor child!" said he, "let us leave this accursed house." "You," said he, as he passed Lord de Clifford, who stood with his arms folded, his lips compressed, his nostrils dilating, and his eyes glaring like a demon; you are a rich and a great man, I am a poor and a lowly one, but there is the same God in heaven for us both, and we shall meet again." 66 "I'm sure, my dear," said his virtuous and exemplary parent, as the old man closed the door, "I hope this will be a lesson to you never again to have anything to say to those sort of low girls, but keep more among your equals in all these here affairs de cUR! for you see, my dear, what insolence it subjects you to." Mary Lee from that day was an altered being; though her reason wandered occasionally, yet it was but for short intervals, and those "few and far between." She seemed as though, from a mighty effort within herself, to retain it against its will, so as to gratify the burning and unquenchable thirst for vengeance that now consumed her; but to strangers, and even to her chief friend and counsellor, Madge Brindal, she often assumed a degree of imbecility that was far from real, in fur therance of her designs, which were, never to lose sight of Lord de Clifford's plans as far as she could ascertain them, in the hope of achieving that vague and shadowy revenge which, matured as it was by Madge's mysterious prophecies, became a part and attribute of her existence. And Lord de Clifford! what change did this dark episode make in his existence? None, save that of determining him to go abroad a little sooner than he otherwise might have done, and leaving Blichingly immediately. What other change could it make? for no one knew poor Mary Lee, and every one knew Lord de Clifford; a Mecenas in his way, a spawner of Whig pamphlets, and a crack political writer in the "Edinburgh;" he crammed newspaper editors with good dinners, and they crammed him with praise; he figured in paragraph after paragraph as "that enlightened and patriotic nobleman, whose liberal policy and just views had triumphed over the accident of birth and the prejudice of station, and who, to his eternal honour be it spoken, had taught the people that all greatness, all freedom, all justice, and all morals! must emanate from themselves!"" With regard to his personal and individual code, when his vices did not interfere more actively, his was that philosophy of indolence which the epicurean Roman taught, and which looks upon life only as a visionary pageant, and death as the deep sleep that succeeds the dream. Such philosophy, "falsely so called," ever has been, and ever will be, destructive of all pure and lofty feelings; an antidote to all that is ennobling and good; a plague-spot, dark, pestilent, and all-corrupting, in the soul of that man who harbours it. And did the image of poor Mary Lee, a wreck in mind, body, and soul, never overshadow his pleasures or shake his ambition? It has been ascertained that there is iron enough in the blood of forty-two men to make a ploughshare weighing about twenty-four pounds: Lord de Clifford had reversed the order of nature in this, as in most other things he had iron enough in his single composition to have made forty-two ploughshares. CHAPTER XV. "If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. * * Cooled my friends, heated mine enemies." * Merchant of Venice. "A tale of human power-despair not-list and learn! * "What, returned, captain!" * P. B. SHELLEY. SCHILLER'S Robbers. WHEN Mrs. Stokes reached Mary Lee's cottage, it was almost dark, for the clouds had again gathered in black masses, and predicted an impending storm. She hurried up the little wilderness of a garden, and finding the door shut, tapped at the window; but receiving no answer, she tried to raise the latch of the door, which, however, resisted her efforts, being locked from within. "Dear me, how provoking!" said Mrs. Stokes, as large drops of rain began to fall, and a loud peal of thunder rolled above her as though it would rend the heavens; "they cannot be all out, surely? Bless me, how it lightens !" and Mrs. Stokes placed her hand before her eyes, and hurried round to the back of the house, to seek admittance there; but the thunder grew louder and louder, and her appeals for admittance were either unheard or unheeded. "How very tiresome!" reiterated Mrs. Stokes; "I shall be drowned. I'll try and get in at the window of Lee's workroom." So saying, she walked up to it, but stood transfixed to the spot at the scene she beheld within. In the large old chimney blazed a wood fire, on which was placed a tripod, surmounted by a large black iron |