him how to do so." Having said
this, he saluted her with more emotion than was consistent with
his usual train of feeling, and took his leave; Lady Ashton, as she
accompanied him out of the apartment, assuring him that her daughter did
full justice to the sincerity of his attachment, and requesting him to
see Sir William before his departure, "since," as she said, with a keen
glance reverting towards Lucy, "against St. Jude's day, we must all be
ready to SIGN AND SEAL."

"To sign and seal!" echoed Lucy, in a muttering tone, as the door of the
apartment closed--"to sign and seal--to do and die!" and, clasping her
extenuated hands together, she sunk back on the easy-chair she occupied,
in a state resembling stupor.

From this she was shortly after awakened by the boisterous entry of her
brother Henry, who clamorously reminded her of a promise to give him
two yards of carnation ribbon to make knots to his new garters. With the
most patient composure Lucy arose, and opening a little ivory cabinet,
sought out the ribbon the lad waned, measured it accurately, cut it off
into proper lengths, and knotted it into the fashion his boyish whim
required.

"Dinna shut the cabinet yet," said Henry, "for I must have some of your
silver wire to fasten the bells to my hawk's jesses,--and yet the new
falcon's not worth them neither; for do you know, after all the plague
we had to get her from an eyrie, all the way at Posso, in Mannor Water,
she's going to prove, after all, nothing better than a rifler: she just
wets her singles in the blood of the partridge, and then breaks away,
and lets her fly; and what good can the poor bird do after that, you
know, except pine and die in the first heather-cow or whin-bush she can
crawl into?"

"Right, Henry--right--very right," said Luch, mournfully, holding the
boy fast by the hand, after she had given him the wire he wanted; "but
there are more riflers in the world than your falcon, and more wounded
birds that seek but to die in quiet, that can find neither brake nor
whin-bush to hide their head in."

"Ah! that's some speech out of your romances," said the boy; "and Sholto
says they have turned your head. But I hear Norman whistling to the
hawk; I must go fasten on the jesses."

And he scampered away with the thoughtless gaiety of boyhood, leaving
his sister to the bitterness of her own reflections.

"It is decreed," she said, "that every living creature, even those who
owe me most kindnes