another that we meet again. I shall see you before I quit Scotland, and to-morrow I shall be able in manlier terms to speak the adieu which, for my honour and happiness, I trust may be an eternal one."

He pressed her clasped hands with a gentle and respectful good night, and Helen was conscious of no more till she found the showering tears deluge her pillow in the darkness and solitude of midnight.

CHAPTER X.

"Betrothed, betraying, and betrayed!"

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

THERE was no occasion for Helen to invent an excuse for her absence next morning from the breakfast table; she was altogether unable to appear, and when Caroline came to her, with an earnest request that she should try the recipe of fresh air for her violent headache, and once more accompany the party to the ice, there needed no other proof of her in

ability to comply, than was furnished by her languid and almost haggard features. Caroline urged her to accept of her companionship for the morning, but Helen pleaded the engrossing occupation of letters to England; and her friend departed, after extorting a promise that she would walk towards the loch when her business was over; with the understanding that they would meet somewhere about mid-way, and then return home together. Caroline withdrew, and in a short time the party of skaiters left the castle in high spirits for Loch Drome.

The amusement of that day was of a much more brilliant character than could be commanded in the hasty preparations of the first essay, and the sledge, the curling stones, and the piper were severally put under contribution for the sports of the morning. Helen could see the laughing cavalcade from her turret windows, and she scanned the group

with straining eyes, for one whom her heart throbbed at not perceiving in their ranks. The interview she dreaded, was haunting her imagination, and she assured herself that Faulconbridge would send to request the few moments' audience, without which, he had said that he would not leave the castle, and on which it seemed as if the color of her future fate depended.

The prospect of that momentous meeting sent the life blood to its citadel, and left her cheek tintless with agitation, while every nerve thrilled and strained with terror, as she reverted to the dreadful scene of last night. She was faint with conflicting feelings, and arousing herself to a laudable effort at selfcommand she applied determinately to the employment she had allotted herself. But the heart's first tumult is not so easily stilled, and Helen's pen hung listlessly over the stainless sheet, for many long minutes of uncontroul

able abstraction. How could she write calmly to one who had till now read every emotion of her heart, and yet smother the thoughts that would have engrossed her page? how could she touch calmly and lightly on a topic that had power to render the very characters she traced it in weak and illegible? And though she might pour out the love and sympathy which her heart swelled to express, and ask the thousand questions which the opening prospects of her friend suggested, yet was it not almost an insult to appropriate the confidence she was unable to return?

Helen bowed before the tyranny of her passionate anxiety, and laying down her idle pen in despair, laid her cold cheek upon her hand, and abandoned herself to thoughts which found their usual vent in a passion of tears. Alas! how strangely different were those tears from the blissful torrent that had bathed her first dear consciousness of that