force of conscience, that I, who studied to surprise her, seemed myself the surprised, and was certainly the embarrassed person.

“Has anything happened?” said Miss Vernon. “Has any one arrived at the Hall?”

“No one that I know of,” I answered, in some confusion; “I only sought the Orlando.”

“It lies there,” said Miss Vernon, pointing to the table.

In removing one or two books to get at that which I pretended to seek, I was, in truth, meditating to make a handsome retreat from an investigation to which I felt my assurance inadequate, when I perceived a man’s glove lying upon the table. My eyes encountered those of Miss Vernon, who blushed deeply.

“It is one of my relics,” she said, with hesitation, replying not to my words, but to my looks; “it is one of the gloves of my grandfather, the original of the superb Vandyke which you admire.”

As if she thought something more than her bare assertion was necessary to prove her statement true, she opened a drawer of the large oaken table, and, taking out another glove, threw it towards me. When a temper naturally ingenuous stoops to equivocate or to dissemble, the anxious pain with which the unwonted task is laboured, often induces the hearer to doubt the authenticity of the tale. I cast a hasty glance on both gloves, and then replied gravely—“The gloves resemble each other, doubtless, in form and embroidery; but they cannot form a pair, since they both belong to the right hand.”

She bit her lip with anger, and again coloured deeply.

“You do right to expose me,” she replied, with bitterness; “some friends would have only judged from what I said, that I chose to give no particular explanation of a circumstance which calls for none—at least to a stranger. You have judged better, and have made me feel, not only the meanness of duplicity, but my own inadequacy to sustain the task of a dissembler. I now tell you distinctly, that that glove is not the fellow, as you have acutely discerned, to the one which I just now produced. It belongs to a friend yet dearer to me than the original of Vandyke’s picture—a friend by whose counsels I have been, and will be, guided—whom I honour—whom I”—She paused.

I was irritated at her manner, and filled up the blank in my own way. “Whom she loves, Miss Vernon would say.”

“And if I do say so,” she replied haughtily, “by whom shall my affection be called to account?”

“Not by me, Miss Vernon, assuredly. I entreat you to hold me acquitted of such presumption. But,” I continued, with some emphasis, for I was now piqued in return, “I hope Miss Vernon will pardon a friend, from whom she seems disposed to withdraw the title, for observing—”

“Observe nothing, sir,” she interrupted, with some vehemence, “except that I will neither be doubted nor questioned. There does not exist one by whom I will be either interrogated or judged; and if you sought this unusual time of presenting yourself, in order to spy upon my privacy, the friendship or interest with which you pretend to regard me, is a poor excuse for your uncivil curiosity.”

“I relieve you of my presence,” said I, with pride equal to her own; for my temper has ever been a stranger to stooping, even in cases where my feelings were most deeply interested—“I relieve you of my presence. I awake from a pleasant, but a most delusive dream; and—but we understand each other.”

I had reached the door of the apartment, when Miss Vernon, whose movements were sometimes so rapid as to seem almost instinctive, overtook me, and, catching hold of my arm, stopped me with that air of authority which she could so whimsically assume, and which, from the naïveté and simplicity of her manner, had an effect so peculiarly interesting.