r two before we arrive, as Mrs.
Beaufort's health renders short stages necessary. I really do hope that
Arthur, also, will not be an invalid, poor fellow! one in a family is
quite enough; and I find Mrs. Beaufort's delicacy very inconvenient,
especially in moving about and in keeping up one's county connexions. A
young man's health, however, is soon restored. I am very sorry to hear
of your gout, except that it carries off all other complaints. I am
very well, thank Heaven; indeed, my health has been much better of late
years: Beaufort Court agrees with me so well! The more I reflect, the
more I am astonished at the monstrous and wicked impudence of that
fellow--to defraud a man out of his own property! You are quite
right,--certainly a conspiracy.

"Yours truly, "R. B."

"P. S.--I shall keep a constant eye on the Spencers.

"Burn this immediately."

After he had written and sealed this letter, Mr. Beaufort went to bed
and slept soundly.

And the next day that place was desolate, and the board on the lawn
announced that it was again to be let. But thither daily, in rain or
sunshine, came the solitary lover, as a bird that seeks its young in the
deserted nest:--Again and again he haunted the spot where he had strayed
with the lost one,--and again and again murmured his passionate vows
beneath the fast-fading limes. Are those vows destined to be ratified or
annulled? Will the absent forget, or the lingerer be consoled? Had the
characters of that young romance been lightly stamped on the fancy where
once obliterated they are erased for ever,--or were they graven deep in
those tablets where the writing, even when invisible, exists still, and
revives, sweet letter by letter, when the light and the warmth borrowed
from the One Bright Presence are applied to the faithful record? There
is but one Wizard to disclose that secret, as all others,--the old
Grave-digger, whose Churchyard is the Earth,--whose trade is to find
burial-places for Passions that seemed immortal,--disinterring the
ashes of some long-crumbling Memory--to hollow out the dark bed of
some new-perished Hope:--He who determines all things, and prophesies
none,--for his oracles are uncomprehended till the doom is sealed--He
who in the bloom of the fairest affection detects the hectic that
consumes it, and while the hymn rings at the altar, marks with his
joyless eye the grave for the bridal vow.--Wherever is the sepulchre,
there is thy temple, O melancholy T