Kind and excellent old man! How pleasant were the tears which I shed over this letter! but still how much more welcome to my soul were those which it wrung from the heart of Pendarves! But amidst the various feelings which made my cheek pale, my brow thoughtful and sad, my form meagre, and which deprived me of every thing but the mere outline of former beauty, was the consciousness that my mother's heart was estranged from my husband. He had even exceeded all her fears and expectations; and her manner to him was full of that cold civility, which when it replaces ardent affection is of all things the most terrible to endure from one whom you love and venerate. He felt it to his heart's core, and alas! he resented it by flying oftener from his home and the wife whom he thus rendered wretched. At this period my mother was surprised by a most unexpected guest, and, situated as I was, an unwelcome visitor to both; for it was Ferdinand de Walden. Business had brought him to England; and as time had, he believed, mellowed his attachment to me into friendship, he had no objection to visit my mother, and renew his acquaintance with me. But though she prepared him to see me much altered, as I had not, she said, recovered the loss of my child, he was so overcome when he saw me, that he was forced to leave the room; and the sight of that faded face and form, nay, I may say, the utter loss of my beauty, endeared me yet more to the heart of De Walden. Had I been an artful, had I been a coquettish woman, this was the time to show it; for I might have easily roused the jealousy of my husband, and perhaps have terrified him back to his allegiance. But I should have felt debased if I had excited one feeling of jealousy in a husband's heart, and my manner was so cold to De Walden that he complained of it to my mother. Mr. Oswald called on De Walden, as soon as he heard of his arrival, for he had known him abroad, and a day was fixed for our meeting him at Oswald Lodge: nay, my mother, to mark her great respect for her guest, would have joined the party had she not sprained her ankle severely the day before. It was now some weeks since I had dined there; therefore I had not seen the great increase of intimacy which was visible between Seymour and Lady Martindale, and which I dreaded should be observed by Lord Martindale himself: but he did not seem to mind it, and looked at me with such an expression of countenance, lavishing on me at the same time such disgusting flatteries, that the dark eye of De Walden flashed fire as he regarded him, and he beheld my absorbed and inattentive husband with a look in which scorn contended with agony. But if Seymour was so completely absorbed in looking at and listening to the Syren who bewitched him, she was not equally absorbed in him: but I saw that when he was not looking at her, she was earnestly examining De Walden, and that his eye dwelt on her with a very marked and scornful meaning.