was deeply engaged with that beautiful scene in the “Merchant of Venice” where two lovers, describing the stillness of a summer night, enhance on each other its charms, and was lost in the associations of story and of feeling which it awakens, when I heard upon the lake the sound of a flageolet.  I have told you it was Brown’s favourite instrument.  Who could touch it in a night which, though still and serene, was too cold, and too late in the year, to invite forth any wanderer for mere pleasure?  I drew yet nearer the window, and hearkened with breathless attention; the sounds paused a space, were then resumed, paused again, and again reached my ear, ever coming nearer and nearer.  At length I distinguished plainly that little Hindu air which you called my favourite.  I have told you by whom it was taught me; the instrument, the tones, were his own!  Was it earthly music, or notes passing on the wind, to warn me of his death?

’It was some time ere I could summon courage to step on the balcony; nothing could have emboldened me to do so but the strong conviction of my mind that he was still alive, and that we should again meet; but that conviction did embolden me, and I ventured, though with a throbbing heart.  There was a small skiff with a single person.  O, Matilda, it was himself!  I knew his appearance after so long an absence, and through the shadow of the night, as perfectly as if we had parted yesterday, and met again in the broad sunshine!  He guided his boat under the balcony, and spoke to me; I hardly knew what he said, or what I replied.  Indeed, I could scarcely speak for weeping, but they were joyful tears.  We were disturbed by the barking of a dog at some distance, and parted, but not before he had conjured me to prepare to meet him at the same place and hour this evening.

’But where and to what is all this tending?  Can I answer this question?  I cannot.  Heaven, that saved him from death and delivered him from captivity, that saved my father, too, from shedding the blood of one who would not have blemished a hair of his head, that Heaven must guide me out of this labyrinth.  Enough for me the firm resolution that Matilda shall not blush for her friend, my father for his daughter, nor my lover for her on whom he has fixed his affection.’

CHAPTER XVIII

     Talk with a man out of a window!—­a proper saying.

          Much Ado about Nothing.

We must proceed with our extracts from Miss Mannering’s letters, which throw light upon natural good sense, principle, and feelings, blemished by an imperfect education and the folly of a misjudging mother, who called her husband in her heart a tyrant until she feared him as such, and read romances until she became so enamoured of the complicated intrigues which they contain as to assume the management of a little family novel of her own, and constitute her daughter, a girl of sixteen, the principal heroine.  She delighted