During this crisis, what were the feelings of the haughty step-mother? She could not be expected to wish for the recovery of the being whom she hated with such intensity, and, although she was forced to appear concerned for him, and the best medical attendance was, by her orders, procured, yet I have not the least doubt that the one burning wish of her heart, during all that terrible time, was that the young heir might never recover. His death, indeed, would be the consummation of all her hopes. It would, at once, place her darling son in possession of the vast estates of his father—a position at which she could not look without a momentary bewilderment. As day after day elapsed, and the young heir grew weaker and weaker, her hopes rose in proportion, and the prize on which, at first, she had scarcely ventured to look, she now regarded as almost in the possession of her child. How her heart leaped—we will not attempt to disguise it—at the prospect before her. She would be removed from all fear of the interference of Herbert—she would be saved from the shame of being thwarted as she had been—she would no longer have a right to remain at the Hall only as long as her husband lived; and though, under other circumstances, she felt she might have continued in it to her dying day, yet she knew that Herbert, after what had passed, would, on his father’s death, cut off all communication with her. Besides her pride revolted from accepting a favor at the hands of the young heir. Her own child too! brought up as he had been, with habits of such lavish expenditure, how would he ever be able to live on the fortune, handsome though it was, reserved for the younger son of the house of Wentworth. He had been used to every indulgence; he had been taught to regard everybody and everything as subservient to his wishes; in short, he had been educated as the heir rather than as the younger son of the family—and now, when the vast estates of his father were almost within his grasp, when only the life of a sickly boy was in his way, could his mother be expected to look on the death of the real heir with any thing but complacency? But she dissembled her feelings: the world gave her credit for the most poignant anguish of mind during the vacillations of the disease. “And how is the patient to-night, doctor,” said she, following the physician out of the sick chamber, and affecting to place her handkerchief to her eyes; “do you not think he is a little, a very little improved?” “I do not wish, unnecessarily, to alarm you,” was the answer; “indeed, you must have seen the ravages of the disease; but so far from thinking your son”—oh! how the word grated on her feelings—“any better, I fear he cannot survive until morning. He is not naturally of a strong constitution, and this fever would have brought the stoutest man to the grave. I wonder how young Mr. Wentworth has withstood it so long.”