public life; but
he is very intimate with one of the ministers, who, it is said, has
had the address to profit much by his abilities. All other particulars
concerning him are extremely uncertain. Of his person and manners you
had better judge yourself; for I am sure, Emily, that my petition for
inviting him here is already granted." "By all means," said Emily: "you
cannot be more anxious to see him than I am." And so the conversation
dropped. Lady Margaret went to the library; Mrs. Dalton seated herself
on the ottoman, dividing her attention between the last novel and her
Italian greyhound; and Emily left the room in order to revisit her
former and favourite haunts. Her young son was her companion, and she
was not sorry that he was her only one. To be the instructress of an
infant, a mother should be its playmate; and Emily was, perhaps, wiser
than she imagined, when she ran with a laughing eye and a light foot
over the grass, occupying herself almost with the same earnestness as
her child in the same infantine amusements. As they passed the wood
which led to the lake at the bottom of the grounds, the boy, who was
before Emily, suddenly stopped. She came hastily up to him; and scarcely
two paces before, though half hid by the steep bank of the lake beneath
which he reclined, she saw a man apparently asleep. A volume of;
Shakespeare lay beside him: the child had seized it. As she took it from
him in order to replace it, her eyes rested upon the passage the boy had
accidentally opened. How often in after days was that passage recalled
as an omen! It was the following:

Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history
The course of true love never did run smooth!
Midsummer Night's Dream.

As she laid the book gently down she caught a glimpse of the
countenance of the sleeper: never did she forget the expression which it
wore,--stern, proud, mournful even in repose!

She did not wait for him to wake. She hurried home through the trees.
All that day she was silent and abstracted; the face haunted her like a
dream. Strange as it may seem, she spoke neither to Lady Margaret nor to
Mrs. Dalton of her adventure. Why? Is there in our hearts any prescience
of their misfortunes?

On the next day, Falkland, who had received and accepted Lady Margaret's
invitation, was expected to dinner. Emily felt a strong yet
excusable curiosity to see one of whom she had