TALES
OF
MY TIME.

WHO IS SHE?

"As a stranger give it welcome."    Hamlet.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The following story is founded on facts which came within the knowledgeof the writer. The precise point at which truth ends, and fictionbegins, it is not necessary to divulge; but in an age when an avidityfor the stimulus of real adventure seems in a great degree to havesuperseded the love of mere romance, it may not be uninteresting tostate that the heroine of the following pages is not altogether acreature of imagination.

CONTENTS

Chapter

• I
• II
• III
• IV
• V
• VI
• VII
• VIII
• IX
• X

 CHAPTER I.

"Oh! this is trim!"—Troilus and Cressida.

At not more than a stone's throw from a neat market town, in a certainshire of England, lived Francis Hartland, Esq. in a well-built squarehouse, which was separated from the King's high road, by a lawn oftwenty acres. Round this lawn a double row of handsome elms lined aring fence, and formed the outer boundary, in that part next the house,of a bank covered with all sorts of shrubs, which sloped in a graduallyinclined plane, from the shining laurel to the dwarf cistus, and met abroad belt of gravel, hard and smooth as marble, through which noupstart weed ever dared to force its way. This walk was fringed by aborder of flowers, in such variety of glowing tints, that lawn and allmight be aptly compared to a robe of green velvet, trimmed with aphylactery of broidered work, worthy of Sheba's Queen in all her glory,while the whole exhibited such precision and nicety in the keeping, asto suggest the idea that its owner, in league with the fairies,possessed some secret charm against every noxious reptile and devouringfly.

This Snuggery was not the hereditary right of Mr. Hartland, butwas purchased for valuable consideration, and he came to live in it,nobody knew from whence, or how incited.

His appearance did not afford rich material for romance; for he was asleek, mild, contented looking man of forty odd, with an opencountenance. A spacious forehead of pipe-clay whiteness, from which hishair was making annual recession, surmounted a nose of latinostrousprojection, eyes of rather the "lack lustre" character, and cheeks ofroseate hue, or perhaps more truly, though less poetically, ofbrick-dust dye; while the to