he Second
smiling upon me with the eyes and lips of Philip Sheldon's stepdaughter!

Or was it only a delusion of my own? Was my mind so steeped in the
thought of that girl--was my heart so impressed by her beauty, that I
could not look upon a fair woman's face without conjuring up her
likeness in the pictured countenance? However this may be, I looked
long and tenderly at the face which seemed to me to resemble the woman
I love.

Of course I questioned the rector as to the original of this particular
miniature. He could tell me nothing about it, except that he thought it
was not one of the Caulfields or Haygarths. The man in the
full-bottomed Queen-Anne wig was Jeremiah Caulfield, brewer, father of
the pious Rebecca; the woman with the high powdered head was the pious
Rebecca herself; the man in the George-the-Second wig was Matthew
Haygarth. The other three were kindred of Rebecca's. But the
wild-haired damsel was some unknown creature, for whose presence Mr.
Wendover was unable to account.

I examined the frame of the miniature, and found that it opened at the
back. Behind the ivory on which the portrait was painted there was a
lock of dark hair incased in crystal; and on the inside of the case,
which was of some worthless metal gilded, there was scratched the name
"Molly."

How this Molly with the loose dark locks came to be admitted among the
prim, and pious Caulfields is certainly more than I can understand.

My exploration of the house having resulted only in this little
romantic accident of the likeness to Charlotte, I prepared to take my
departure, no wiser than when I had first crossed the threshold. The
rector very politely proposed to show me the church; and as I
considered that it would be well to take a copy of the Haygarthian
entries in the register, I availed myself of his offer. He despatched a
maid-servant to summon his clerk, in order that that functionary might
assist in the investigation of the registers. The girl departed on this
errand, while her master conducted me across his garden, in which there
is now a gate opening into the churchyard.

It is the most picturesque of burial-grounds, darkened by the shadow of
those solemn yews and spreading cedars. We walked very slowly between
the crumbling old tombstones, which have almost all grown one-sided
with time. Mr. Wendover led me through a little labyrinth of lowly
graves to a high and ponderous iron railing surrounding a square space,
in th