'My new white one!' exclaimed Adeline, astonished at an interference so new. 'Yes, miss--I think it will be taken kinder, and look better.' At these words Adeline's suspicions were awakened. 'I see, Evans,' she cried, 'you have something extraordinary to tell me:--I partly guess; I,--my mother--' Here, unable to proceed, she lay down on the bed which she had just quitted. 'Yes, Miss Adeline--'tis very true; but pray compose yourself, I am sure I have cried enough on your account, that I have.' 'What is true, my good Evans?' said Adeline faintly. 'Why, miss, my lady was married this morning to Sir Patrick O'Carrol!--Mercy on me, how pale you look! I am sure I wish the villain was at the bottom of the sea, so I do.' 'Leave me,' said Adeline faintly, struggling for utterance. 'No--that I will not,' bluntly replied Evans; 'you are not fit to be left; and they are rejoicing below with Sir Pat's great staring servant. But, for my part, I had rather stay here and cry with you than laugh with them.' Adeline hid her face in the pillow, incapable of further resistance, and groaned aloud. 'Who should ever have thought my lady would have done so!' continued the maid.--'Only think, miss! they say, and I doubt it is too true, that there have been no writings, or settlements, I think they call them, drawn up; and so Sir Pat have got all, and he is over head and ears in debt, and my lady is to pay him out on't! At this account, which Adeline feared was a just one, as she had seen no preparations for a wedding going on, and had observed no signs of deeds, or any thing of the kind, she started up in an agony of grief--'Then has my mother given me up, indeed!' she exclaimed, clasping her hands together, 'and the once darling child may soon be a friendless outcast!' 'You want a friend, Miss Adeline!' said the kind girl, bursting into tears.--'Never, while I live, or any of my fellow-servants.' And Adeline, whose heart was bursting with a sense of forlornness and abandonment, felt consoled by the artless sympathy of her attendant; and, giving way to a violent flood of tears, she threw her arms round her neck, and sobbed upon her bosom. Having thus eased her feelings, she recollected that it was incumbent on her to exert her fortitude; and that it was a duty which she owed her mother not to condemn her conduct openly herself, nor suffer any one else to do it in her presence: still, at that moment, she could not find in her heart to reprove the observations by which, in spite of her sense of propriety, she had been soothed and gratified; but she hastened to dress herself as became a bridal dinner, and dismissed, as soon as she could, the affectionate Evans from her presence. She then walked up and down her chamber, in order to summon courage to enter the drawing-room.--'But how strange, how cruel it was,' said she, 'that my mother did not come to inform me of this important event herself!'