What pen can paint her feelings when she reached her chamber? Here were all her bright visions dissipated. The prospect before her was darker than ever. What would become of herself after her husband’s death?—what, indeed, would that husband say when he returned and heard Herbert’s version of his brother’s and her conduct? What would become of her darling son, subject, perhaps, to his father’s displeasure, and, at most, left with nothing but a younger son’s fortune, with which to support his expensive habits? She paused in the centre of her room. A thousand furies seemed agitating her countenance. Pride, fear, hate, all chased each other, by turns, through her bosom. Suddenly her face assumed a look of comparative calmness. She walked to a neighboring closet, took from its wall a small phial, and then, gazing a moment at her face in the glass, she placed her slippers on her feet, and sought the room of the invalid. Motioning to the nurse to keep her seat, this fearful woman crossed to the other side of the bed, and sat down by the little table on which stood the medicine for the sufferer. The cup already contained the dose which was to be given him at the expiration of the hour. She looked at the watch—but a few minutes remained to the time. She looked around the room—no one was in it but the nurse, who was concealed by the curtains of the bed. She hastily uncorked the phial, and, with a trembling hand, let fall a few drops of the liquid it contained into the cup. The phial was then secreted, and, with a face as ashy as the dead, she heard, the next instant, the clock strike the hour. The patient awoke at the noise, and, almost on the instant, the nurse came around and took the cup in her hand. My pen trembles so I can scarcely proceed—but I must. Suffice it to say the cup was drained, and the invalid, as if exhausted, sank back on his pillow. When next the attendant drew aside the curtain, she gazed on the face of the dead. Let me escape from this terrible tragedy. The young heir was buried in lordly state, and no suspicion ever arose that he died otherwise than by a sudden relapse. But was Mrs. Wentworth happy? She saw her son the acknowledged heir of the estate, and for this she had labored her whole life—but was she happy? I will answer, in the words of Scripture, when speaking of the wicked—“Terrors take hold on him as waters; the tempest swalloweth him up in the night. . . . _For God shall cast upon him and not spare._” Time passed. Even Mrs. Wentworth began to find, in the lapse of years, and in gazing on her son, now near eighteen, some alleviation for her tortured mind. But God, whose inscrutable Providence had hitherto seemed to forget the unholy deed we have just narrated, was now preparing for its author a fearful retribution.