Blind Love

obleman, who was called the Earl, and the youngest of his

s ultimately discovered, he had gained money by his unworthy appeal to the meanly prosaic superstition of modern times. A long interval had then elapsed, and nothing had been heard of him, when a starving man was discovered by a traveller, lost on a Western prairie. The ill-fated Irish lord had associated himself with an Indian tribe-had committed some offence against their laws-and had been deliberately deserted and left to die. On his recovery, he wrote to his elder brother (who had inherited the title and estates on the death of the old Earl) to say that he was ashamed of the life that he had led, and eager to make amendment by accepting any honest employment that could be offered to him. The traveller who had saved his life, and whose opinion was to be trusted, declared that the letter represented a sincerely penitent state of mind. There were good qualities in the vagabond, which only wanted a little merciful encouragement to assert themselves. The reply that he received from England came from the lawyers employed by the new Earl. They had arranged with their agents in New York to pay to the younger brother a legacy of a thousand pounds, which represented all that had been left to him by his father's will. If he wrote again his letters would not be answered; his brother had done with him. Treated in thi

e newspaper story. Of Miss Henley's customary good spirits not a trace remained. "Few people, Rho

a reason

unworthy of her. So far, but no farther, her conscience yielded to its own conviction of what was just. But the one unassailable vital force in this world is the force of love. It may submit to the hard necessities of life; it may acknowledge the imperative claims of duty; it may be silent under reproach, and submissive to privation-but, suffer what it may, it is the master-passion still; subject to no artificial influences, ownin

the evening p

during his last visit to London, said she wished to-morrow had come and gone. His sweet temper, his handsome face, his lively talk had made Arthur a favourite everywhere. Mrs. Lewson had left her comfo

of retiring at an e

ing; the whistling passage of bullets through the air; the piercing cry of a man mortally wounded, and that man, perhaps--? Iris shrank from her own horrid thought. A momentary faintness overcame her;

ck at the door, a tall man walk

es?" the tal

s even better acquainted with it.