land aquiline lineaments, and in the crisp ringlets
which floated like a cloud down to the knees of the figure, some
traces of her own likeness, a dream of a new destiny flitted before
her,--she blushed to her very neck; and as she bent her face over
the drawing and gazed, her whole soul seemed to rise into her eyes,
and a single tear dropped upon the paper. She laid her hand over
it, and then turned hastily away.

'You do not like it! I have been too bold,'--said Lancelot,
fearfully.

'Oh, no! no! It is so beautiful--so full of deep wisdom! But--but-
-You may leave it.'

Lancelot slipped silently out of the room, he hardly knew why; and
when he was gone, Argemone caught up the drawing, pressed it to her
bosom, covered it with kisses, and hid it, as too precious for any
eyes but her own, in the farthest corner of her secretaire.

And yet she fancied that she was not in love!

The vicar saw the growth of this intimacy with a fast-lengthening
face; for it was very evident that Argemone could not serve two
masters so utterly contradictory as himself and Lancelot, and that
either the lover or the father-confessor must speedily resign
office. The vicar had had great disadvantages, by the bye, in
fulfilling the latter function; for his visits at the Priory had
been all but forbidden; and Argemone's 'spiritual state' had been
directed by means of a secret correspondence,--a method which some
clergymen, and some young ladies too, have discovered, in the last
few years, to be quite consistent with moral delicacy and filial
obedience. John Bull, like a stupid fellow as he is, has still his
doubts upon the point; but he should remember that though St. Paul
tells women when they want advice to ask their husbands at home, yet
if the poor woman has no husband, or, as often happens, her
husband's advice is unpleasant, to whom is she to go but to the next
best substitute, her spiritual cicisbeo, or favourite clergyman? In
sad earnest, neither husband nor parent deserves pity in the immense
majority of such cases. Woman will have guidance. It is her
delight and glory to be led; and if her husband or her parents will
not meet the cravings of her intellect, she must go elsewhere to
find a teacher, and run into the wildest extravagances of private
judgment, in the very hope of getting rid of it, just as poor
Argemone had been led to do.

And, indeed, she had, of late, wandered into very stra