s, these feelings were united with a jealous dread of his own
probable lot in the chances of matrimony.

His uncle had been the supposed heir to a more elevated title than his
own, but he was now the actual possessor of as honorable a name, and of
much larger revenues. The great wealth of his maternal grandfather, and
the considerable estate of his own father, were, or would soon be, centred
in himself; and if a woman as amiable, as faultless, as affection had
taught him to believe his mother to be, could yield in her situation to
the lure of worldly honors, had he not great reason to dread, that a hand
might be bestowed at some day upon himself, when the heart would point out
some other destination, if the real wishes of its owner were consulted?

Pendennyss was modest by nature, and humble from principle, though by no
means distrustful; yet the shock of discovering his mother's fault, the
gloom occasioned by her death and his father's declining health, sometimes
led him into a train of reflections which, at others, he would have
fervently deprecated.

A short time after the decease of the countess, Mr. Denbigh, finding his
constitution fast giving way, under the wasting of a decline he had been
in for a year, resolved to finish his days in the abode of his Christian
friend, Doctor Ives. For several years they had not met; increasing duties
and infirmities on both sides having interrupted their visits.

By easy stages he left the residence of his son in Wales, and accompanied
by both his children he reached Lumley Castle much exhausted; here he took
a solemn and final leave of Marian, unwilling that she should so soon
witness again the death of another parent, and dismissing the earl's.
equipage and attendants a short day's ride from B----, they proceeded
alone to the rectory.

A letter had been forwarded acquainting the doctor of his approaching
visit, wishing it to be perfectly private, but not alluding to its object,
and naming a day, a week later than the one on which he arrived. This plan
was altered on perceiving the torch of life more rapidly approaching the
socket than he had at first supposed. His unexpected appearance and
reception are known. Denbigh's death and the departure of his son
followed; Francis having been Pendennyss's companion to the tomb of his
ancestors in Westmoreland.

The earl had a shrinking delicacy, under the knowledge of his family
history, that made him anxious to draw all eyes from