and despair in his countenance. Staggering into the saloon with the paper still grasped convulsively within his fingers, he furiously rang the bell, and in a voice scarcely audible from emotion, ordered the stranger to be instantly admitted to him.

Then reverting to the scroll which still trembled in his hand, and from which, with a kind of fascination, he could not withdraw his eyes, he read its brief contents repeatedly and aloud, and as if almost doubting of their existence; they were as follows "I ask immediate admittance; you have slain your son.

“ WALSINGHAM.”

It was while thus employed, with a mind absorbed by the import of this dreadful note, that the door of the saloon opening, presented the writer of it to his view. The Duke started; "Tell me, Mr. Walsingham," he cried, in accents tremulous with apprehension, and pointing to the note, "can this be true?"

"The youth, my Lord Duke, whom you have wounded, and who now lies in imminent danger of death, is your son by the Countess of

Shrewsbury."* "Then he is not yet dead! Thank God, I am not yet the murderer of my own offspring!" "He had not, it is true," replied Mr. Walsingham, "breathed his last when I left him, but I understand from his medical attendant, that there is every thing to apprehend." " But how came he hither?" cried the Duke, "by what strange fatality has he been placed here, thus concealed, yet within the influence of his wretched father? Often have I implored his mother that I might see him during his infancy, but in vain! I knew not indeed, that he even still existed, and behold the issue! O why, why was he thus hidden from my knowledge?"

"My Lord, my Lord," exclaimed Mr. Walsingham," the answer to this latter question should cover you with shame and confusion.

That the Duke had a son, as the result of his amour with this lady, we are told by Andrew Marvell in one of his letters. As the fate of this young man, whom Marvell inaccurately styles Earl of Coventry, is uncertain, though he is supposed to have died young, I have considered the anecdote as sufficient ground for the introduction of such a character into my narrative. It may be necessary to add, that the Duke had no heirs by his Duchess.

The unhappy woman whom you seduced, and who has been long repentant of the heinous crime she had committed, was well convinced, that while you continued the career of vice which had plunged her into such enormous guilt, which had rendered her at once both a murderer and an adultress,-nay, my Lord, do not start, - the most dreadful event which could happen to her child would be the knowledge of his father!"

"I feel, Mr. Walsingham, I too severely feel," replied the Duke, almost suffocated by the poignancy of his anguish, "that she was right. But why, let me again ask, why came he hither?"

"That he was placed where your unhallowed passions, my Lord, have, unhappily led to his detection, was in the first instance owing to the belief, that, as you had never resided on these estates, your visits here would, if ever made, be but occasional and brief; and to a confidence, that the seclusion and solitude of Rivaulx were at the same time such as, however near to Helmsley, might yet, under these circumstances, bid defiance to curiosity or premature discovery;

and in the second, to an anxious wish on the part of his mother, that if ever the principles and conduct of her seducer should become otherwise than what they had been, he might be found on the property of his father, and within reach of that patronage and support, which would then, she trusted, be judiciously and cautiously extended towards him.

"But I am forgetting in these explanations, my Lord Duke, the principal object of my mission, the immediate restoration of the young woman whom, for the worst of purposes, and at the expense of the blood of your son, you have forcibly torn from the arms of her aged father, an old man, blind and worn down with years and misfortunes, and whom this event is about to plunge into the grave."

"And whence came this young woman, Mr. Walsingham?" exclaimed his Grace," and for what purpose was her sex at first concealed? You will allow that suspicion might rest on such a circumstance."

"To detail her history, my Lord, would, at the present moment, occupy more time than I have to spare. I can only assure you, that the

breath of heaven is not more pure than the virtue and innocence of Adeline Lluellyn. I will further add, that she is justly and sincerely beloved by the unfortunate youth who now lies stretched upon a bed of suffering; and that when you, my Lord, passed your sword through the body of your son, you inflicted not a pang so great, as that which you have occasioned him by the seizure and detention of Adeline. trust, my Lord, that to the catalogue of enormous sins which press heavy on your soul, you have not added that of offering violence to this helpless young woman, whom I again, in the name of her injured father, and your perhaps dying son, instantly demand at your hands.”

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Spare me, spare me, Mr. Walsingham," replied the Duke, in extreme agitation, "nor further lacerate a heart overwhelmed by a consciousness of its own guilt. I have, however, thank God! not added to its load by the crime of which you suspect me. Indeed I have not seen Adeline since I left your cottage; she was conveyed by my direction to Gilling Castle, and I will now, with the view of making what atone