ou will see the prudence of confining
research at first to Louise, rather than to the child who is the
principal object of it; for it is not till you can ascertain what
has become of her that you can trust the accuracy of any information
respecting the daughter, whom I assume, perhaps after all erroneously,
to be mine. Though Louise talked with such levity of holding herself
free to marry, the birth of her child might be sufficient injury to her
reputation to become a serious obstacle to such second nuptials, not
having taken formal steps to annul her marriage with myself. If not thus
remarried, there would be no reason why she should not resume her maiden
name of Duval, as she did in the signature of her letter to me: finding
that I had ceased to molest her by the inquiries, to elude which she had
invented the false statement of her death. It seems probable, therefore,
that she is residing somewhere in Paris, and in the name of Duval. Of
course the burden of uncertainty as to your future cannot be left to
oppress you for an indefinite length of time. If at the end, say, of two
years, your researches have wholly failed, consider three-fourths of
my whole fortune to have passed to you, and put by the fourth to
accumulate, should the child afterwards be discovered, and satisfy your
judgment as to her claims on me as her father. Should she not, it will
be a reserve fund for your own children. But oh, if my child could be
found in time! and oh, if she be all that could win your heart, and be
the wife you would select from free choice! I can say no more. Pity me,
and judge leniently of Janet's husband.

R. K.

The key to Graham's conduct is now given,--the deep sorrow that took
him to the tomb of the aunt he so revered, and whose honoured memory
was subjected to so great a risk; the slightness of change in his
expenditure and mode of life, after an inheritance supposed to be so
ample; the abnegation of his political ambition; the subject of his
inquiries, and the cautious reserve imposed upon them; above all, the
position towards Isaura in which he was so cruelly placed.

Certainly, his first thought in revolving the conditions of his trust
had been that of marriage with this lost child of Richard King's,
should she be discovered single, disengaged, and not repulsive to his
inclinations. Tacitly he subscribed to the reasons for this course
alleged by the deceased. It was the simplest and readiest plan of