try to hide the cause of my oddness from my companions; and a headache, which was not feigned, was my excuse.

The ladies, however, at length left the walk, and Seymour was forced to return to us. He immediately launched forth into rapturous praises of their charms and elegant manners, while I listened in angry silence, as I had expected him to apologize for leaving me; and nothing, I perceived, was further from his thoughts.

"But what is the matter?" cried he. "Are you not well, Helen, that you do not speak?"

"Not quite."

"Helen has a headache," said my cousin.

"Poor child!" cried Seymour kindly; "then let us go home directly; it grows late, and I believe you do not sit up to supper yet, Helen, except on great occasions."

Here was an affront. I angrily replied, "Indeed, Mr. Seymour Pendarves, you seem to know very little about me, and to care very little about me now."

"Mr., and a tossed-up chin, and a flushed face! Why, really, Helen, I find I did not know much about you: I took you for a sweet-tempered girl; but I have often thought you captious and pettish of late, and I never could imagine why; but let me tell you, Miss Helen Pendarves, that if you lose your good-temper, you will lose your greatest charm—any woman's greatest charm."

This reproach I could not bear from him; for I knew, if I was become pettish and captious, affection for him was the cause; and I burst into tears. But struggling with my feelings, I sobbed out, "And I suppose, sir, you think I have no other charm than my good-temper."

"I, Helen! No such thing: I think quite the contrary; and I do assure you, the ladies I have just left, they——"

"O yes!" cried I, "they, I suppose, have every charm possible."

"They have great charms, certainly, both of face and person; still, they are only fine women; but you, Helen, are quite a little beauty—only you are as yet but a child, you know."

Away went my ill-humours, and even my jealousy; for I was sure, though the boy of seventeen thought it more manly to talk to women grown, I knew as he advanced in life, and I too, he would be of a different opinion; and I also knew a few years would fade the ladies whom he so much admired, while the same number of years would leave me still young, and still a beauty. Yes, he thought me a beauty, and he had told me so; and I repeated his words to myself so often, that in a reverie I once spoke them aloud, and my mother asked, "Child, what are you saying about Helen and beauty?"

"Helen was a great beauty, mamma—was she not?" said I, blushing at my own duplicity; but the subterfuge weighed heavily on my mind, nor could I rest till I told the whole truth to my mother, who, in consideration of my ingenuousness, merely observed to me, that when, from the exaggeration to which even boys were much given, Seymour called me a beauty, he only meant I was a pretty girl: but I thought differently.

Seymour now remained at home full six months, with a private tutor, as he was too old to go back to school, and Lady Helen thought him too young for Oxford. During that time, my mother, from (as I suspected) some private information, began to form an unfavourable opinion of his steadiness of conduct; and the anxieties of a mother for his future well-being clouded the still beautiful countenance of Lady Helen.

Once, as I was apparently engaged in reading, I overheard Lady Helen say to my mother, "Do you not discern any symptoms yet of a growing attachment on his side? he may be on his guard before me."

"None whatever: he seems to consider her still only as a beautiful child; and she is certainly not at all more womanly in her appearance this last year."

"I am sorry for it," was the answer; "for there is no guard so good for the morals of a young man, as a virtuous attachment."

"Yes," said my mother; "and I had hoped, that by being so much with Helen, he would have loved her, as it were, by anticipation."

I never could find out whether they meant me to hear this conversation or not; but the assurance which it conveyed, that Seymour did not love me yet, was not lost upon me; and it was possible that all this was said for that purpose. The consequence was, that I put the strictest guard over my words and manners, lest Seymour should discover the attachment which I had with much confidence indulged; and the attachment itself, I resolved to resist, with all the energy possible: for surely, thought I, if I am too young to inspire love, I ought to be too young to feel it; and I am too proud to love where I am not beloved. And I kept the former part of my resolution, for my attachment remained unsuspected; nor did its strength hold out entirely uninjured against the conviction of the utter indifference of its object. However, an affectionate grasp of my hand, and a respectful salute of my cheek, replaced the boisterous familiarity of his greeting, when we first met.

"Surely," said I to myself, "his feelings towards me have undergone a change;" and while hope was thus restored to my bosom, I felt that my former feelings would, on the slightest encouragement, return with undiminished force.

I have since learnt—though not till long after the period in question—that Lady Helen had thought proper to have a conversation with her son on the subject nearest her heart; namely, a marriage between him and me, in the course of a few years.

He listened to her, I found, with great surprise, but great complacency; only exclaiming, "But she is such a child at present, dear mother!"

"But she will not always be a child," replied Lady Helen; "and though I believe she is quite indifferent to you now, I am much mistaken if that 'child,' as you call her, did not at your first arrival feel something resembling love and jealousy too."

"Is it possible!" exclaimed Seymour, "and I not to be conscious of it! Dear little Helen!" And then he recollected the scene in the walk, and my petulance, silence, and tears, for which he now accounted in a manner flattering to his vanity; and it was so new—so piquant, to be loved by a child, that he was charmed with the idea of his conquest. But then Lady Helen had told him he had lost this affection; and as none can bear to renounce the power which they have once possessed, he was resolved to pay me those attentions by the want of which I had been alienated. He was too conscious, however, to be able to act upon his resolves; and he had learnt to consider me in so new a light, that he felt embarrassed when he should have been assiduous; and though I saw a change in his manner during the last four days, it was far from being a favourable one. It was only on the last of the four days that he seemed to have shaken off the trammels which hung about him. That day, as I was drawing at the window, and he was reading aloud by his mother, I saw him lay down his book, and whisper in her ear.

"Helen," said she, "what do you think Seymour says? He says, that he has now found that you are no longer a child."

"Indeed!" replied I, blushing, but in a tone of pique: "and since when? That is a discovery which I have long made."

"And since when have you yourself made it, dear Helen?" said he, with that saucy smile of his which you have often said was irresistible.

"These four years, at least," I answered, trying to avoid his eyes.

"Do not fib, Helen," was his impertinent reply.

"You make Helen blush, my dear son."

"So much the better; she never looks so beautiful as when she blushes, and I dare say some little time hence, we shall have some English Priam exclaiming of this modern Helen—