-traitor,
temporised and told him falsehoods, and hesitated about throwing him off
until the Marquis had declared himself? Yes. The girl he and poor
Clive loved so was ruined by her artful relatives, was unworthy of his
affection and his boy's, was to be banished, like her worthless brother,
out of his regard for ever. And the man she had chosen in preference to
his Clive!--a roue, a libertine, whose extravagances and dissipations
were the talk of every club, who had no wit, nor talents, not even
constancy (for had he not taken the first opportunity to throw her off?)
to recommend him--only a great title and a fortune wherewith to bribe
her! For shame, for shame! Her engagement to this man was a blot upon
her--the rupture only a just punishment and humiliation. Poor unhappy
girl! let her take care of her wretched brother's abandoned children,
give up the world, and amend her life.

This was the sentence Thomas Newcome delivered: a righteous and
tender-hearted man, as we know, but judging in this case wrongly, and
bearing much too hardly, as we who know her betters must think, upon one
who had her faults certainly, but whose errors were not all of her own
making. Who set her on the path she walked in? It was her parents' hands
which led her, and her parents' voices which commanded her to accept the
temptation set before her. What did she know of the character of the man
selected to be her husband? Those who should have known better brought
him to her, and vouched for him. Noble, unhappy young creature! are you
the first of your sisterhood who has been bidden to traffic your beauty,
to crush and slay your honest natural affections, to sell your truth
and your life for rank and title? But the Judge who sees not the outward
acts merely, but their causes, and views not the wrong alone, but the
temptations, struggles, ignorance of erring creatures, we know has a
different code to ours--to ours, who fall upon the fallen, who fawn
upon the prosperous so, who administer our praises and punishments so
prematurely, who now strike so hard, and, anon, spare so shamelessly.

Our stay with our hospitable friends at Rosebury was perforce coming to
a close, for indeed weeks after weeks had passed since we had been under
their pleasant roof; and in spite of dearest Ethel's remonstrances it
was clear that dearest Laura must take her farewell. In these last days,
besides the visits which daily took place between one and other, the
young m