"this hour in the cavern every evening, "and sing piteous love ditties till the morning dawns,"

Imogen shuddered. There are moments when the strongest efforts of reason are insufficient to destroy the influence of imagination under the power of early superstitious prejudices. The strong mind of Imogen had in its first progression to truth and reason destroyed that power, but the images of supernatural horror received on her fancy among the bigoted sisterhood of St. Dominick were not yet totally faded, and she now trembled at what she did not believe; but by one of those efforts of mind by which she always gave her back her self, she saw the folly of her childish apprehensions; and, supposing it was some solitary wanderer like herself whom she had seen, and who had endeavoured to shun her observation by plunging into the cavern, she in a careless manner asked the guide if she had been the only visitor to Vaucluse that day.

"The only one, lady," said the guide,

except, mayhap, the pilgrim who passed "our cottage before you drove up to it; "he might have made it his way towards "Avignon. My dame offered him alms "as he passed her to pray for the departed "soul of her youngest boy, but he an"swered nought, and walked on as though "he did not hear her; upon which my "dame thinks he was bound to a vow of "silence, and was going to the shrine of "Loretto to do penance for some mortal "sin. Mass! she said as how he looked "hugely like a murderer, though certes "she saw nothing of his face, by reason "of his hat (in which was fastened a large scallop) being flapped in his eyes."

The mystery was now solved. This pilgrim must have been the visitant of the cavern, and Imogen's fears, though they changed their character, still existed; for her proximity to a murderer was a more substantial cause of terror than even her silent communion with a being of the other world.

They now reached the cottage door, where Imogen's vehicle stood ready for her reception; and, having presented the guide with a piece of money, she drove away, experiencing a mingled thrill of pleasure and of pain from having visited a spot so celebrated in the annals of poetry, and which nature herself seemed to have designed for the retreat of a wounded and sensible heart, the indulgence of hopeless passion, and an asylum for cureless sorrow or wild despair.

CHAP. XXXIX.

Like bright metals on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my faults,

Shall shew more goodly, and attract more eyes,
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

SHAKESPEARE.-Henry IV.

THE days of Imogen continued to flow mildly on, like the peaceful course of an uninterrupted stream. Gazing, "through

"the dark postern of time elasped," on the tumultuous agitations of her past life, she acquired from the view a just comparative estimate of the halcyon tranquillity of her present situation; and, in a placid acquiescence to rational contentment, she endeavoured to lull those thrilling recollections which sometimes told her she KNEW that she was happier than she FELT.

While she continued to improve her heart by the practice of every virtue, and to enlarge the scale of her ideas by every liberal pursuit, her mind still ascended in progressive excellence towards that perfection it was created to attain, and looked down on its former frivolous engagements and illusive errors with mingled emotions of remorse and contempt; as the vapour which, rising from among the mists of the earth, sports for a moment on the bosom of the sun-tinged cloud, till, borne aloft by its own specific lightness, it at last reaches that pure point of rarefication where, firm and condensed, it

rolls majestically above the nether atmosphere, on whose surface it before but idly floated.

About a week from the period of her sentimental journey to Vaucluse, as Imogen was indulging in one of those solitary rambles along the picturesque shores of the Durance, which gave to her view the two-fold interesting prospects of the chateaux de St. Dorval and de Montargis, and waked the pensive pleasures of her heart and imagination, she was accosted by one of her own vassals, whose wife, a worthy and industrious young woman, the comfort of an aged father, and the attentive mother of an infant progeny, was lying in the last stage of a decline.— Imogen's first inquiry was for the invalid, whom she had visited since her confinement, and whose life she had protracted, though she could not save, by her attentions.

"Alas! good my lady," replied Justin, "it is all, I fear, nearly over with my