light all is about my heart since I heard the good pious souls speaking out so plainly. Ralph, mine honest Ralph, now you'll feel again how well it is with a man after confession and absolution, and what another sort of spirit an absolved conscience gives one in need and peril."

"An absolved conscience!" said Ralph, who had hitherto looked fixedly out of the window, and now, turning upon her with a gloomy countenance, planted himself in the middle of the room; "an absolved conscience! Where will you get that, when head and heart încline not as you and others for you would fain persuade them. But no more of this; I see clearly which way the wind blows; and for the rest, the talking of these boastful treacherous Lords and their idle followers has not yet settled the business. Once before, Northumberland turned the seales when the Catholics triumphed as now, and thought to build their nest in Norwich. The same thing may happen again; in which case certain folks

have burnt their tongues confoundedly, and will find it a hard matter to cool the porridge they cooked up in so much hurry."

With this he pressed his cap more deeply over his brows, took up his knotty stick, and still muttering to himself went out into the garden to forget his cares in the bustle of the day.

"Yes, yes, go," said Dame Partridge to herself; "I shall soon bring you round again under the Catholic Queen, to our eternal honour and advantage. And now, you overweening, blasphemous Protestants! who broke the crosier and stole the tapers from the altar, now light yourselves in the night that is coming on you. But we'll make it a short one for you depend upon that you shall have a blaze of pitch and sulphur that shall give your heretic souls a foretaste of the hell to come."

P

CHAPTER IV.

WHILE opinions and actions were thus contending for and against the claims of Lady Grey, she herself was living in innocent ignorance, more like a prisoner than a Queen, in the lofty and splendid chambers of the Tower. To fix her youthful fancy on more pleasant objects, she was allured to her toilet, no less by the vanity of her mother, than by the admiring love of her young husband, who gazed upon her with looks of pride, while a host of busy women adorned her beauty with the best and the richest that the fortune of the hour presented to the new sovereign. Jane put back her mother's hand entreatingly" To what purpose are so many brilliant - stones? Whom am I to dazzle with them, when to me there is but one, whose love

I would possess without deceitful glitter, or cease to live."

As she said this she looked tenderly in the eyes of Dudley, while he, sitting on a stool at her feet, played with her long silk tresses, and detained them from the women who were binding them up in the fashion of the time.

"Child," said the Lady Francisca, with a suppressed sigh, "you are too ignorant of the arms with which you might overcome your enemies."

"Again talking of arms and hinting at war and enemies, of which my heart knows so little, that I would willingly give up to my cousin the crown that has been forced on me, if she would only leave my quiet happiness untouched, and I might live undisturbed at Sion House by the side of my Dudley."

"Is it possible ?" cried her mother, with unrestrained indignation. "Have you so little of the dignity which belongs to noble pride? Jane,

Jane, let me not think you weak enough to publicly avow opinions at which I blush-which disarm your defenders and open the door to insolent pretentions. Shame on the grandchild of King Henry! who does not even respect her ancestor so far as to wish to maintain his inheritance before the world!"

Why do you chide the Queen?" cried Guilford, starting up proudly from his seat; "None can understand the language of her love but he to whom it is directed. Oh! the word in her mouth is as comprehensive as the feeling which gave it birth. And if Jane offers the throne itself to fate, in exchange for that quiet happiness in which only her friend can sympathize, by Heavens! it does not express a slight estimation, but the highest worth, of a good, which nothing on earth can equal, since she proposes it as the purchase-price of love."

"You are extremely skilful in dignifying what others propound," said Francisca, with a sneer, "and can explain all very conveniently, and in