seemed obedient to his will, soon wafted him to the English shores;
and he hastened to the mansion of his fathers, and there, for a
moment, appeared to lose, in the embraces and caresses of his sister,
all memory of the past. If she before, by her infantine caresses, had
gained his affection, now that the woman began to appear, she was
still more attaching as a companion.

Miss Aubrey had not that winning grace which gains the gaze and
applause of the drawing-room assemblies. There was none of that light
brilliancy which only exists in the heated atmosphere of a crowded
apartment. Her blue eye was never lit up by the levity of the mind
beneath. There was a melancholy charm about it which did not seem to
arise from misfortune, but from some feeling within, that appeared to
indicate a soul conscious of a brighter realm. Her step was not that
light footing, which strays where'er a butterfly or a colour may
attract---it was sedate and pensive. When alone, her face was never
brightened by the smile of joy; but when her brother breathed to her
his affection, and would in her presence forget those griefs she knew
destroyed his rest, who would have exchanged her smile for that of the
voluptuary? It seemed as if those eyes,---that face were then playing
in the light of their own native sphere. She was yet only eighteen,
and had not been presented to the world, it having been thought by her
guardians more fit that her presentation should be delayed until her
brother's return from the continent, when he might be her protector.
It was now, therefore, resolved that the next drawing-room, which was
fast approaching, should be the epoch of her entry into the "busy
scene. " Aubrey would rather have remained in the mansion of his
fathers, and fed upon the melancholy which overpowered him. He could
not fed interest about the frivolities of fashionable strangers, when
his mind had been so torn by the events he had witnessed; but he