At length Ella raised her hands, and spoke deprecatingly; but each appeal only seemed to rouse Laura to fresh outbursts of violence, so that at last the bitter taunts and revilings were suffered in silence, the angry woman's voice rising louder with her victim's patience, till, alarmed by her daughter's angry, hysterical cries, Mrs Bray hurried into the room. "What is the meaning of all this?" she shrieked. "Laura!--Miss Bedford! Are you both mad?" Ella was about to speak, but Laura fiercely interrupted her. "Speak a word if you dare!" she said. "I will not have anything said! Such insolence is insupportable." "But what has Miss Bedford been doing?" shrieked Mrs Bray. "You are alarming the whole house. What does it mean?" "Nothing. Let it rest," cried Laura, cooling down rapidly, but with face a-flame; for she could not bear her mother to be a witness to her humiliation, there being, based on Laura's slight exaggerations of one or two attentions, a full belief in the Bray family that even if the question had not been put by Charley Vining, matters had so far progressed that he was sure to be her husband: hence her objection to a word being uttered; and, shrinking back, Ella stood with bended head, while a passage of arms took place between mother and daughter, Mrs Bray's curiosity increasing with Laura's reticence. Finding though, at last, that nothing was to be gained, Mrs Bray followed Laura from the room; and Ella, trembling with excitement and the agitation of many painful hours, was about to welcome the solitude hers at last, when once more the door opened, and, pale and wild-looking, so that she felt to pity her, Laura again appeared, closing the door carefully behind her, and then standing to gaze thoughtfully in Ella's face. She had come to threaten--to try and enforce silence; but her voice was husky; the fierce passion which had before sustained her had now passed away, and the weak woman, cut to the heart by disappointment, was once more asserting herself. For quite five minutes she stood with heaving breast, trying to speak, but the words would not come; and at last, dreading to let the woman she hated and despised, one whom she looked upon as full of deceit and guile, gaze upon and triumph in her tears, Laura turned and fled from the room; and once more Ella was alone. Volume 1, Chapter XVIII. ANALYSIS OF THE HEART. Alone--alone once more in her bedroom, the scene of so many bitter tears, Ella stood with flushed cheeks, and eyes that seemed to burn, thinking of the words that had been uttered to her that day. She held the crushed rose in her hand--the flower Laura had with cruel hand snatched away and cast down, and upon which she had trampled with as little remorse as upon her feelings. But the agitated girl had once more secured the torn blossom, to stand gazing down upon its bruised petals.