Lord Dunroe was at this period perfectly well aware that Birney’s visit to France was occasioned by purposes that boded nothing favorable to his interests; and were it not for Lucy’s illness, there is little doubt that the marriage would, ere now, have taken place.  A fortnight had elapsed, and every day so completely filled him with alarm, that he proposed to Sir Thomas Gourlay the expediency of getting the license at once, and having the ceremony performed privately in her father’s house.  To this the father would have assented, were it not that he had taken it into his head that Lucy was rallying, and would soon be in a condition to go through it, in the parish church, at least.  A few days, he hoped, would enable her to bear it; but if not, he was willing to make every concession to his lordship’s wishes.  Her delicate health, he said, would be a sufficient justification.  At all events, both agreed that there could be no harm in having the license provided:  and, accordingly, upon the morning of the stranger’s visit, Sir Thomas and Lord Dunroe had just left the house of the former for the Ecclesiastical Court, in Henrietta street, a few minutes before his arrival.  Sir Thomas was mistaken, however, in imagining that his daughter’s health was improving, The doctor, indeed, had ordered carriage exercise essentially necessary; and Lucy being none of those weak and foolish girls, who sink under illness and calamity by an apathetic neglect of their health, or a criminal indifference to the means of guarding and prolonging the existence into which God has called them, left nothing undone on her part to second the efforts of the physician.  Accordingly, whenever she was able to be up, or the weather permitted it, she sat in the carriage for an hour or two as it drove through some of the beautiful suburban scenery by which our city is surrounded.

The stranger, on the door being opened, was told by a servant, through mistake, that Sir Thomas Gourlay was within.  The man then showed him to the drawing-room, where he said there was none but Miss Gourlay, he believed, who was waiting for the carriage to take her airing.

On hearing this piece of intelligence the stranger’s heart began to palpitate, and his whole system, physical and spiritual, was disturbed by a general commotion that mounted to pain, and almost banished his presence of mind for the moment.  He tapped at the drawing-room door, and a low, melancholy voice, that penetrated his heart, said, “Come in.”  He entered, and there on a sofa sat Lucy before him.  He did not bow—­his heart was too deeply interested in her fate to remember the formalities of ceremony—­but he stood, and fixed his eyes upon her with a long and anxious gaze.  There she sat; but, oh! how much changed in appearance from what he had known her on every previous interview.  Not that the change, whilst it spoke of sorrow and suffering, was one which diminished her beauty; on the contrary, it had only