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ROMANCE AND REALITY.

to ask pardon and cash. The former was withheld on account of the latter, till his elder brother's unexceptionable marriage with Miss Belgrave, and her estate, gave him an interest in the family which he forthwith exerted in favour of Captain Arundel. But a few short years, and the young officer died in battle, and his widow only survived to place their orphan girl in Mr. and Mrs. Arundel's care, to whom Emily had ever been even as their own.

Mr. Arundel was a favourable specimen of the old school, when courtesy, though stately, was kind, and, though elaborate, yet of costly matériel; a well-read, though not a literary man—everybody did not write in his day—generous to excess; and if proud, his consciousness of gentlemanlike descent was but shewn in his strictness of gentlemanlike feelings. The last of a very old family, an indolent, perhaps an over-sensitive temper—often closely allied—had kept him a quiet dweller on his own lands; and though, from increasing expenses without increasing funds, many an old manor and ancient wood had developed those aërial propensities which modern times have shewn to he inherent in their nature, and had made themselves wings and flown away, yet enough re-