this little stipulation, she consented to his leaving her the very next morning, which, indeed, was necessary, to enable him to be at home in time for the dinner to be given to the Committee. As Reuben dined out, he took leave of his aunt then, promising to send her a newspaper with the best report of his speech, and to return soon after the meeting and finish his visit. He dined, as we have said, with Master Turner, who amused him by repeating in the course of the evening, "The Chancellor told me, that the best sermon he ever heard in his life, was one which he heard your father preach in a little country-church near Chichester."

Mrs. Mountjoy dined alone, and thought she was doomed to pass the entire evening in solitude, which was not to her an agreeable prospect, when, to her great delight and surprise, while she sat at tea, who should arrive but Mrs. Wyndham? She had come from Boulogne that morning, had dined at Portland-place, and could not let the evening close" without paying her daughter a visit." Mrs. Mountjoy, on her part, was equally charmed to receive her fair young step-mother. This relationship was always a cause of pleasantry, though really Mrs. Mountjoy looked very little senior to Mrs. Wyndham.

Mrs. Wyndham had left the Dean behind her; perfectly well, but in a state of feverish excitement, owing to affairs in England, and, as his wife said, receiving letters and despatches every hour from members of parliament, ministers and public men in every situation. As to anything that might be in agitation affecting his personal interests, Mrs. Wyndham was very little better informed than Mrs. Mountjoy, the Dean had been of late so extremely reserved about politics and about himself; but it was impossible not to believe that something very extraordinary would happen before long.

Mrs. Mountjoy inquired whether he had been lately corresponding with her sister, Mrs. Medlicott, or her husband?

"He had a letter from Mr. Medlicott," said Mrs. Wyndham, "and I think it annoyed him more than any other communication he has had from home; he is excessively angry about some meeting or other they are going to hold at Chichester."

"You don't tell me so !" cried poor Mrs. Mountjoy, starting from her chair with an emotion that made Mrs. Wyndham start likewise.

Mrs. Mountjoy then related everything that had occurred relating to the meeting.

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Mountjoy," said Mrs. Wyndham," why

were you not more confident in your own judgment, you judged so very correctly; it would absolutely ruin that dear clever nephew of yours in my husband's favour, if he were to take any part, much more a prominent one, in this Chichester meeting." Mrs. Mountjoy was unable to speak, she was so distressed and excited.

"And just now it would be so particularly unfortunate,” added Mrs. Wyndham, with still more earnestness, "when nobody knows what a day may bring forth-how soon the Dean may have it in his power to be of the greatest service to Reuben in his profession. Can nothing be done to prevent him from taking so very indiscreet a step?"

"Reuben dines out; he will not be at home until a late hour, and early to-morrow morning he has arranged to start for Chichester."

"You must either see him again before he goes," said Mrs. Wyndham, "or write him a very, very strong letter."

"One thing certainly might be done," said Mrs. Mountjoy, but she paused and immediately added, that it was too strong a measure for her to take.

Mrs. Wyndham insisted upon hearing what her idea was.

"His speech is lying in his room," replied Mrs. Mountjoy, laughing at herself for the absurd thought that had come into her head; "it just occurred to me to carry it off and burn it or hide it."

"Well, but that is a most capital notion," said Mrs. Wyndham, jumping up with the greatest animation, "let us go, my dear Mrs. Mountjoy, and put it into immediate execution. I am for burning the speech: I am against half measures."

"It will answer every purpose to lock it up," said the widow. "Let us go to his room, at all events."

They went up together to Reuben's apartment. Blanche was not a little amused by the minute daintiness of the arrangements, which his solicitous and bountiful aunt had made for Reuben's accommodation. She was near forgetting the business in hand, in her admiration of the velvet dressing-gown and slippers especially.

"I see how it is," she said, laughing; "you do every thing to spoil your nephew: no wonder you find him so perverse and unmanageable;-you are quite as bad as any mother."

"Perhaps you will be a mother yourself, my dear, one of these days," said Mrs. Mountjoy, parrying the attack, in a laughing whisper.

"Ah, no!" said Blanche, with a sigh that was not very sorrowful; "I shall never be more than a grandmother and a stepmother, but that's dignity enough, I think, for a little woman

like me."

The speech was lying just where Mrs. Mountjoy had seen it a few hours earlier in the evening; but now, when she took it up, she handled it even more lovingly than before; and again she repeated that there could be no advantage in destroying the papers-she would carry them away to her own bed-chamber, and hide them on some high shelf, or in some inaccessible nook or corner. Mrs. Wyndham was curious to look over the speech. Mrs. Mountjoy placed it in her hands, and just at the same moment Agatha came in, with a great fuss, to get some directions about Mr. Reuben's linen, as he was to leave town in the morning. Mrs. Mountjoy went with the maid into her nephew's dressing-room to settle this little business, which did not occupy five minutes. When she returned to where she had left Mrs. Wyndham, she found that resolute young lady standing near the fire, contemplating with firmness, though not, perhaps, without some little misgiving and scruples of conscience, the burning eloquence of Reuben Medlicott.

The affrighted widow knew at a glance, only too well, what it was that was curling and twisting in the flames, as if the papers themselves actually felt the pangs of martyrdom. Passionately clasping her hands, and regarding Mrs. Wyndham with looks which expressed at once astonishment, sorrow, and reproach, she uttered a series of the most piteous exclamations, ending with bitterly upbraiding herself for having been the first to suggest so barbarous a proceeding.

"My dear Mrs. Mountjoy," said Blanche, with the agitated manner of a woman who, having done an energetic thing, is inclined to fear she has been too vigorous, "it would never have done for you to have merely carried it off; your nephew would infallibly have got it from you."

Mrs. Mountjoy made no reply, but stood with her eyes riveted upon the burning papers, while over and over again her friend repeated, that what she had done she had done for the best, and she was confident Reuben himself would one day thank her for it. At length the flames devoured the last of their prey, and the two fair dames went down together, both a little more composed; Mrs. Mountjoy telling her friend that she could only regard her in the light of an executioner, and Mrs. Wyndham de

fending herself, by declaring in more explicit terms than she had used before, that she had a presentiment of a bishopric, and was bent upon having Reuben for her domestic chaplain.

CHAPTER III.

THE APOSTACY.

THE events of the few succeeding days put Reuben Medlicott, his oratory, prospects, and all about him, quite out of remembrance, at least in the thoughts of his London friends. They had something far more exciting to think of, for rumour had told a true story, and Dean Wyndham returned from Boulogne, to give his adhesion to the Government, and receive the mitre, as the recompense of his sudden and suspicious adoption of a new set of polit ical opinions. The career of this eccentric dignitary reminded the public of those hurricanes which occur in the Caribbean Seas, where the gale will often begin from the north or the south; then suddenly chop round, and blow with equal determination from the opposite point of the compass. And from the history of the same tempests might have been likewise borrowed an apt illustration of some of the effects of the Dean's conversion; for as it is found that the trees upon one side of an island, subjected to one of those abrupt and fierce visitations, are commonly blown down in one direction, while the trees on the opposite side are found prostrated in the reverse one, in like manner, before Dr. Wyndham's former opponents had ceased to reel beneath the tremendous buffets which he had dealt them in the pulpit and the press, his new antagonists were already staggering under the equally formidable blows which it was now their turn to receive.

The event affected people variously, according to their political views, their notions of public morality, their private interests, or their previous estimate of the Dean's probity. Those who were least surprised at his tergiversation were those who best knew him. Those who affected to be most indignant at his perfidy were those who would have been most ready themselves to receive a political traitor with open arms. He was loudly reviled for his hypocrisy, by men who never had better reason than his violence for believing him sincere; while on the other hand he

was now extolled for sincerity by many of his new associates, who had no other grounds for their opinion than his present adherence to their own standard. Many blushed for his infidelity to his party, but many more envied him for the prize he won by it. Some were ashamed of human nature; some were disposed to disbelieve in the existence of truth and virtue; some proclaimed that religion itself had received a mortal blow. There were persons who never would have thought it, and there were others who all along expected it. A great many people said it was not worth his while, at sixty-five, to barter his principles even for a bishopric; but men of the stamp of Lord Greenwich and Mr. De Tabley, who took a secular view of the matter, maintained that if he was only to enjoy his prosperity for five years, there was an amount of good living in five years of episcopacy, for which the price paid was far from unreasonable.

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Those who took a metaphysical view of the case did not fail to recollect the ancient doctrine of the duplicity of the human mind. The Socratic philosophy, for instance, consisted in the retiring of a man within himself, to hold communion with the alter ego which Nature has assigned to each of us. When this communion is of an harmonious and amiable nature, the result is what we call singleness of mind or purpose; when it is controversial, it necessarily leads to the phenomenon of doublemindedness, of which the practical result is the line of conduct vulgarly called tergiversation. According," says Lord Shaftesbury, "as the dual number is practically formed in us, we are supposed to advance in wisdom and moral perfection." The microcosm, in fact, or little world in our bosoms, is divided into two parties, and the more thorough the division is, the more metaphysically complete is our intellectual constitution. We are therefore always to understand a perfect, or (what is tantamount thereto) a double public character as speaking in only one of his persons at a time. Such a man has his Whig self and his Tory self; what are loosely called his inconsistencies, are in reality nothing but the discordant relations subsisting between the two parties in his breast. Two minds, like two heads, are obviously better than one; but what would be the use of two minds, if they were always to think the same thing, or always come to the same conclusion? Nature does nothing in vain, and it is well worthy of observation, as a beautiful analogy between our physical and our moral structure, that the cavity of the human thorax contains two lungs, or organs of breathing, for which no other moral