its master, and the father of the Clara whose portrait, if sought, would have been found very carefully concealed very near to his heart? Why, indeed, was that portrait there at all?

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'Hope," says a great philosopher, "is the last thing that dies in man;" and Henry Rivers' hope was not quite defunct. It is true his resignation had been graciously accepted by the contracting power-by the owner of Fairbourne Court, we mean -who had signified his approval of his young friend's sense of honour, and acquiesced in the propriety of his conduct, while he lamented the disastrous circumstances which had rendered such a course imperative; and so, in the most cold and polite and courtly way imaginable, had bowed, so to speak, his "dear young friend" out of his thoughts. But, on the other hand, had not Clara written to him also, in her prettiest Italian hand, to say that her happiness was blighted for life; that with him she could have been content to live in a cottage; that being thus cast off, she should never more have faith in man; that no doubt Mr. Rivers was right, for perhaps he was tired of his toy, and was glad of an excuse for abandoning it; and, indeed, she had read that man's love was like writing on water, or on sand, or something equally yielding and unimpressible; but that she had never believed it-never-till now?

Yes, all this, and a great deal more than is at all necessary to repeat, but every word of which was deeply graven on Harry's memory, Clara had written, and not so long ago either. And so she had bidden him farewell.

Now, Harry was not a selfish fellow; but he was made of flesh and blood, and it was natural enough for him to question within himself whether he had not been too precipitate after all. And it was natural, at all events, that he should wish to vindicate himself from the false-no, not false, but mistaken-charges thus heaped upon him. He fickle! he tired of his toy!

He couldn't bear this; and so he tried to write: but what

written words could tell all that he had suffered, all that he was still suffering? So, sheet after sheet of letter-paper was spoiled; and then Harry asked himself why he shrunk from one manly effort. He could tell Clara all that was in his heart, could he see her once more: and then, when parted from his lost love for evermore, he would know at least that she had understood and better appreciated the sacrifice he had made.

No doubt this was all very foolish reasoning; but please to bear in mind, reader, that Harry Rivers was a very young man, and that wisdom-if worth the name is of slow growth.

But we have said that Harry's hope was not quite extinct. Since the correspondence just referred to he had received an offer of employment in a distant colony, which, if not immediately lucrative, would probably, and almost certainly, lead to a prosperous result. A few A few years of application and fidelity in this post of honour, and he would return home in comparatively easy circumstances, if not absolutely rich. And what were a few years? True, Hurlock Chase and its surroundings would never be his; but Hurlock Chase was not the world, and there were many stages or degrees of comparison between the greatness of "The Hurlocks" and the littleness of the cottage with which (love included) his poor Clara would have been so content. Why should he quite despair, then, since Clara was so moderate in her wishes, and since, as Harry well knew, there were deep obligations of ancient date due from Clara's father to his own, which surely would plead in his favour? Not that Harry would or could retract the words he had written-the words which had set both Clara and Clara's father free from their engagements. But suppose that when he had, in a cursory, off-hand sort of way, spoken of these new prospects of his, without exaggerating their importance, which he would not intentionally do under any pressure-but having modestly spoken of them, suppose Clara's

father should turn round upon him with a kindly, encouraging smile, and gently chide him for being in so great a hurry to deprive himself of his life's happiness, and should magnanimously encourage him to renew the engagement! And supposing Clara should be called in to Ah, well, these were foolish fancies, and Harry had sternly dismissed them, or tried to dismiss them, as fast as they crowded into his foolish heart; but they would crowd in, for all that.

And Henry Rivers could not forget, though he really tried to forget, and almost despised himself for remembering, that though the Hurlock property was lost to him, he had sufficient grounds for looking upon the Priory as his future inheritance. To be sure, the Priory was, in great part, a ruin, and he was profoundly ignorant of the extent of his aunts' possessions, for he had never attempted to fathom the mystery which evidently surrounded these amiable ladies: but he knew himself to be their nearest relative; and he had no reason to doubt that when, in the course of nature, they should be removed, their earthly possessions, whether large or small, would descend to himself. But, as we have implied, Harry resolutely determined not to build upon this expectation; and when the thought entered his mind he dismissed it with a pious and sincere wish that aunt Melly and aunt Prissy might live very long to enjoy their worldly goods.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CRYPT.

HENRY RIVERS rose early on the morning after his arrival at the Priory. He had passed a restless night. Truth to tell, the anxieties of his mind overcame his bodily fatigue; and his

repose had not been facilitated by the very audible and prolonged nasal respirations of his near bed-fellow, Mr. Crickett. So at day-dawn he sprung from his uneasy couch, and, hastily dressing himself, descended into the court-yard of the Priory, and from the court-yard he found his way into the garden, which was laid out in the formal Dutch style, not then discarded, with terraces, broad, straight, grassed walks, and pleached alleys. Here he proposed to himself to remain till the old clock in the tower gave note of the breakfast-hour, and, wrapped in his solitary musings, had taken two or three turns within its circumscribed limits, when a voice broke in upon the current of his thoughts:

"You are stirring in good time, sir ;" and, on turning round, he beheld Mr. Crickett advancing towards him, with a spade thrown over his shoulder.

"And you also, William. I hope I did not disturb you in passing your room. You were fast asleep, I thought."

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'No, no, sir: I sleep light; and I heard you let yourself out," said Mr. Crickett.

"But you are not going to begin the day with gardening, are you, Mr. Crickett ?”

"Ay, sir; there's always summat to do; and there's no telling how long this fine weather will last, or how short, and if I don't earth up the salary now, no one knows when it will be done;" saying which, Mr. Crickett proceeded to a celery-trench, and began with due deliberation to use his spade.

There are certain states of mind in which the presence or near proximity of a fellow-creature is almost insupportable. Harry Rivers was in one of these states of mind. He turned away impatiently from the zealous gardener, and, passing into another path, strove to recover the train of solitary musings which had been thus suddenly interrupted. But the effort was vain-the more so that he was conscious of being narrowly watched by Mr.

Crickett, whose concern for the unearthed "salary" was too evidently put on for the occasion. After vainly endeavouring, therefore, to overcome the annoyance to which he felt himself exposed, he determined to escape from Mr. Crickett's unwelcome surveillance, and opening a small low door in the garden wall, which led into the outer grounds of the Priory, he walked with a quick step towards the scattered ruins.

Rivers remembered that he had never thoroughly explored these ruins. In his days of boyhood, when his visits to the Priory were few and far between, he had been prohibited from venturing far into the damp, unlighted vaults, by his aunts, who had been told, they said, that the walls were crumbling to decay, and the groined roofs unsafe to pass beneath; and on his later visits he had had such momentous concerns pressing on and weighing down his spirits, that he had no thoughts to give to antiquarian researches. On the present occasion, however, he was seized with a sudden impulse to penetrate into these mysterious recesses, and had descended by some broken stone steps into what appeared to have formerly been a crypt beneath the old Priory chapel, one dilapidated wall of which alone remained standing, when his thoughts and intentions were again interrupted by the familiar voice of Mr. Crickett.

"Curious about the old ruins, I see, sir."

"Not particularly so, my friend," said Harry, somewhat shortly. "Then I wouldn't get among them too much, sir," rejoined the gardener, butler, and general factotum, with a warning voice: "they are reckoned to be uncommonly unsafe."

"So I heard often, many years ago; but they still stand," replied the young man.

"Stand! you don't call this standing, do you, Mr. Rivers?" said Mr. Crickett, laying his hand on a huge mass of stone which lay partially embedded in the earthen floor of the crypt, and which had evidently at some time fallen from the roof with such