manner of that savage people, with whom his previous habits had well
fitted him to associate.

All hopes of the young man's reformation being now ended, Mr. and Mrs.
Butler thought it could serve no purpose to explain to Lady Staunton a
history so full of horror. She remained their guest more than a year,
during the greater part of which period her grief was excessive. In the
latter months, it assumed the appearance of listlessness and low spirits,
which the monotony of her sister's quiet establishment afforded no means
of dissipating. Effie, from her earliest youth, was never formed for a
quiet low content. Far different from her sister, she required the
dissipation of society to divert her sorrow, or enhance her joy. She left
the seclusion of Knocktarlitie with tears of sincere affection, and after
heaping its inmates with all she could think of that might be valuable in
their eyes. But she _did_ leave it; and, when the anguish of the parting
was over, her departure was a relief to both sisters.

The family at the Manse of Knocktarlitie, in their own quiet happiness,
heard of the well-dowered and beautiful Lady Staunton resuming her place
in the fashionable world. They learned it by more substantial proofs, for
David received a commission; and as the military spirit of Bible Butler
seemed to have revived in him, his good behaviour qualified the envy of
five hundred young Highland cadets, "come of good houses," who were
astonished at the rapidity of his promotion. Reuben followed the law, and
rose more slowly, yet surely. Euphemia Butler, whose fortune, augmented
by her aunt's generosity, and added to her own beauty, rendered her no
small prize, married a Highland laird, who never asked the name of her
grand-father, and was loaded on the occasion with presents from Lady
Staunton, which made her the envy of all the beauties in Dumbarton and
Argyle shires.

After blazing nearly ten years in the fashionable world, and hiding, like
many of her compeers, an aching heart with a gay demeanour--after
declining repeated offers of the most respectable kind for a second
matrimonial engagement, Lady Staunton betrayed the inward wound by
retiring to the Continent, and taking up her abode in the convent where
she had received her education. She never took the veil, but lived and
died in severe seclusion, and in the practice of the Roman Catholic
religion, in all its formal observances, vigils, and austerities.

Jeanie had so muc