A year had passed since the events narrated in our last chapter, and how had the time sped with Mabel. Received with a proud and delighted affection by her newly-found parent, and welcomed with almost a mother’s kindness by his titled and wealthy bride, she could not feel otherwise than grateful, and, at times, happy; but as increased intimacy revealed more and more to her of the characters of those whom, under God, she was most bound to obey and honor, Mabel’s heart sank, and her thoughts flew back to the simple piety and humble faith of her early teacher and guardian. The worldliness, the cold selfishness, the grasping ambition, and slavish cringing to superior rank that she saw in all around her, was to the high-souled and enthusiastic girl deserving of the most profound contempt and pity. She saw the father whom she so longed to honor and respect, fawning and bending before a monarch whom he hoped still further to propitiate, and at times he would talk to Mabel about her own advancement, until her whole frame trembled with a nameless fear. He had lately begun to speak more sternly with regard to her neglect of the ceremonies of the Romish Church, not dreaming that this neglect arose from a determined opposition. It did not once occur to him—so little had his own religious belief to do with conviction—that, in the mind of a young and beautiful girl, there could be a settled and resolute preference for any particular church. Mabel had, indeed, never joined in any of the rites of her father’s church, but this he had attributed to thoughtlessness and indifference, little dreaming that, in her own solitary chamber, she enjoyed the purest and truest communion with her Maker, and that not the sternest mandate he could utter, would tempt her to abjure her Protestant faith.

But the trial was yet to come.

For some months after her arrival at the castle, Mabel had continued to receive, constantly, letters from Walter and Mr. Dacre; but she was not long to enjoy this gratification.

“Mabel, my daughter,” said Lord Arlington one day, as he saw with a frown the blush and smile with which she received an unusually large packet from Riverdale; “it were well if you could remember for yourself what were proper and becoming in the rank you now hold; but since your own sense has not prompted you to cease at once all communication with those among whom nothing but your father’s misfortunes could have placed you, I am now compelled to forbid your ever again receiving any of those voluminous epistles, which, to judge from your countenance, must possess a degree of interest perfectly unaccountable. Does the old man send his weekly sermons for your soul’s benefit?” he sneeringly said.

Mabel endeavored to reply, but her eyes fell under his cold, searching gaze; she could not speak, as the thought flashed through her mind that she should never again see that well-known hand, or read those precious words of affection from Walter, never more be cheered and supported by the advice and sympathy of him whom she reverenced more than any earthly being.

“Oh! father, do not, do not compel me to give up my dearest—”

She stopped, for the frown on her father’s face grew darker at this involuntary betrayal of her preference for her early friends—

“Do not compel me to seem so ungrateful and proud to those, whose kindness made me what I am: let me at least write a few words to tell them of your wishes?”

“Mabel—I have already been sufficiently annoyed and displeased by your evident dislike to your new life, and your childish preference for your country home; rouse me no further by opposition, strive to overcome your early prejudices, and to remember you are an Earl’s daughter, and that you may be the wife—”

At this moment, Mabel uttered a faint cry of surprise and terror; then recollecting herself, she complained of feeling unwell, and begged her father’s permission to retire to her own apartment.

“Go, my daughter; but do not let a trifling indisposition prevent your being in readiness to accompany us this evening to the palace, for the king expressly requested me to bring you, and your mother has provided your toilette for the occasion: let me see my Mabel the gayest and happiest, as she will be the loveliest, in the proud assemblage?”

With a sad and heavy heart Mabel gained her own chamber, and there—seated on the floor, with her head buried in the velvet cushions of the luxurious divan, and her precious letters clasped to her bosom—she wept bitterly. Long did she sit thus, with her soft, black hair hanging like a veil around her, and her head bowed in that utter abandonment to grief, that only an impassioned nature can feel.

——