heart and consumed his life. He would fly;
he would escape; he was engaged to Isabel.
It must be that she did not love him, else she
never could have suffered him to leave her;
yet he was bound to her. Honour was not
to be lightly sacrificed. Would Pauline, with
her large passionate eyes, have given up her
lover so coldly? Still he was engaged, and
it was a sin and a crime to think of another.
He would fly from the danger while he could;
he would fight the battle while he had
strength. He was resolved, adamant. One
more interview with Pauline and—but
Pauline presented herself accidentally in the
midst of these indomitable projects. One
glance from her deep sapphire eyes put all
his resolutions to flight—duty, like a pale
ghost, passing slowly by in the shade.

When fully awake to the truth of his
position, Houghton wrote to Isabel. He
wrote to her like a madman, imploring her
to come out to him immediately; to lay aside
all foolish scruples, to think of him only
as her husband, to trust to him implicitly,
and to save him from destruction. He wrote
to her with a fierce emphasis of despair
and entreaty that burned like fire in his
words.

This letter found Isabel enfeebled by long
attendance on her mother; unable to make
much exertion of mind or body, and requiring
entire repose. That she should be restored
to her lover; that she should be happy as
his wife, was, for a moment, like a new
spring-tide in her life to dream. Then she
remembered her father, her dear patient,
noble, self-denying father, to whom she was
now everything in life; and she wrote
and told Charles that she could not go out
to him; but reminded him that his term
of absence had nearly expired; and that,
when he returned, they should be married,
never to be parted again. Why should they
not be married in England rather than in
Jamaica?

"Thank God I am free!" Houghton
exclaimed, when he had read the letter. It
dropped from his nerveless hand. He ordered
his horse, and rode through the burning
tropical sun to Pauline Girard. Not two
hours after the receipt of Isabel's letter he
was the accepted lover of the young French
heiress.

Poor Isabel! at that instant she was
praying for him in her own chamber.

News came to England in due time.
Charles himself wrote to Isabel, gently and
kindly enough; but unmistakeably. It stood
in plain, distinct words, "I am to be married
to Pauline Girard;" and no sophistry could
soften the announcement. He tried to soothe
her wounded feeling by dealing delicately
with her pride. He had been, he urged,
only secondary in her heart. She placed
others before him, and would make no
sacrifice for him. What had happened was
her own doing entirely; she had not cared
to retain him, and he had only acted as she
would have him act, he was sure of that, in
releasing her. And then he was "hers very
affectionately," and "would be always her
friend."

Isabel did not die. She did not even marry
another man out of spite, as many women
have done. She looked ill; but was always
cheerful when she spoke, and declared that
she was quite well. She was more than ever
tender and attentive to her father; and she
went out much less amongst even the quiet
society of their quiet home; but read a great
deal, and without effort or pretension she
lived out her sweet poem of patience and duty
and womanly love.

A GOLDEN COPPERSMITH.

On the twenty-third of March last, the
Imperial French Theatre of Moscow (in
which one hundred and fifty persons resided,
and which gave employment to more than
a thousand) took fire at ten in the morning.
The flames spread with such rapidity
that sixty pupils of the Conservatoire, who
were at the time attending the dancing
classes, were saved with difficulty; some of
them wounded and bruised. Several children
were thrown from the windows and caught
on sheets held out by the people below.
The denseness of the smoke paralysed the
exertions of the firemen; and in three hours
the building was a black ruin. Eleven
individuals perished, and some escaped only by a
miracle; among them a man who was rescued
by an act of heroism, of which the following
is an account:—

Basile Gavriloff Mârine, a Crown slave
belonging to the village of Evséïevaïa, and by
trade a coppersmith, was, at the beginning of
March, returning to St. Petersburg from
visiting his family at the village. He arrived
at Moscow on the night of the eleventh,
with ten of his companions; and, as the railway
train was already gone, they were obliged
to pass the night there, and remain till three
the next afternoon. "The villagers are
curious," Mârine himself relates, "and as we
had never been at Moscow before, we determined
to see all the curiosities of that ancient
town. We entered the Cathedral of the
Assumption, and kissed all its holy relics.
We ascended to the top of the belfry of
d'lvan-Véliky, and then proceeded to the
Bird-market. Here we heard that a terrible
fire was raging—that the Great Theatre was
burning. As it was only noon, we determined
to be spectators, and hastened to the spot."
They arrived just as the fire was at its height:
the theatre burnt from the interior, and the
flames spread rapidly, bursting from the roof
and the windows in savage fury. At the time
the fire broke out, three workmen were engaged
at the top of the building: it gained upon
them so fast, they had only time from a window
to reach the roof; when they frantically