from his regiment with Lady Annesley, but on his return he made no allusion to the visit. His habits of life induced the inference that his allowance was less than liberal; but though lively and open on indifferent subjects, Basil was too reserved concerning his family affairs, and too self-possessed in his good-breeding, for his brother officers to hazard offending him by betraying impertinent curiosity.

Still, the grey-headed colonel, known in the regiment by the name of Old Carrington and the character of an officious bore, meditated, on the present occasion, some investigation of the origin of the young ensign's embarrassment; when, just as he was turning towards him for a re-introduction of the subject of A. O., Basil Annesley, throwing his napkin on the back of his chair, rose and hurried out of the room.

Now Old Carrington was gouty, and the active movements of a lad of twenty soon distanced those of a man who to twenty

added five and twenty years more,―many of them years of active service; so that, before the Waterloo colonel was able to crook his finger round the button of his ensign, Basil had cast his eyes over the advertisements of the Morning Post, and ascertained, to a letter, the address of the money-lender to whom Wilberton's uncle, the Duke of Rochester, was said to owe thirty thousand pounds.

In another half hour he had not only reached his lodgings, but finished and sealed his letter to A. O. Instead of placing it upon the chimney-piece, however, to attract the notice of his servant, (as was his custom with those destined for the twopenny post,) Basil Annesley not only left it upon the table, but placed the blotting-book in which he had been writing, over it, like a tombstone, as if" look on't again he dare not!"

A letter entreating a personal interview with a money-lender!-an abject letter from him, the proud-spirited son of a proud

hearted mother! What would that mother think of him, could she suppose that, disregarding her solemn charges, her affectionate adjurations, he had, within so short a time of entering the army, involved himself in debt to a degree requiring the intervention of an usurer!

Poor Basil threw himself at full length on the sofa of his chamber, with his hands clasped over his head, and his eyes fixed vacantly upon a staring print of the Hetman's Daughter; which in a gaudy frame graced the opposite wall, as likenesses of Cerito or Duvernay embellish the bachelor lodgings of the present day; revolving within himself, with desperate self-recrimination, all that had passed between him and Lady Annesley on the chapter of finance, at their last interview.

It was impossible to conceive a greater contrast, than between the noisy and public life he was leading in town, and the monotonous seclusion of Barlingham Grange.

Situated within a mile of the New Forest, the ancient mansion inhabited by the widow of Sir Bernard Annesley resembled rather a moated farm-house than the cottages of gentility to which widows of moderate means are apt to retire to meet the exigencies of a small establishment. Concealed within the intricacies of a wooded country, attainable only by a detestable cross-road or rather cross-lane cutting across the Forest from Lyndhurst, Barlingham Grange, or as it was abbreviated by the cottagers in the neighbourhood, The Grange, was excluded from all communication with the active world; and Lady Annesley was so cold in her deportment, and so wedded to the solitude in which she had resolutely ensconced herself, that, but for the affectionate fervour of Basil's nature, it must have appeared a penance to him rather than a schoolboy's holiday, to journey twice a year from Harrow into Hampshire, and return thither for a couple of months, between

the period of his quitting Heidelberg, and

entering the army.

Accustomed, however, to ascribe the melancholy reserve of his surviving parent to affliction for the loss of his father, Basil respected her austere melancholy; and though in his boyhood there had been moments when, weary of flinging stones into the old moat to startle the dab-chicks from the reeds, and of contemplating the dilapidated pointed gables of the old red-brick mansion, he had almost wished he might never again set eyes on Barlingham,—when he returned thither to be folded with momentary warmth to the heart of his grave mother, and submit anew to the cross-questioning of her venerable maid Dorcas, and the maundering of the old gardener, the only male domestic of that primitive establishment, he could not forbear feeling that, after all, home was home, a mother, a mother; although the former exhibited the uttermost stagnation of earthly dulness, and