Long before the time fixed for the termination of Agatha’s visit, Alice had urged her to prolong her stay, and, when Mr. Wentworth added his earnest entreaties, she was induced to promise that she would set no other limit to its duration than such as circumstances might create. But as week after week fleeted by, Alice began to doubt whether she had acted wisely in making this request. She was ashamed to acknowledge even to herself the feeling, but, somehow or other, she was not quite as happy as she had been before cousin Agatha’s coming. She attributed it to the nervous irritability from which she was now suffering, and endeavored to think that when she should once more recover her health, she would find her former enjoyment in Agatha’s society. But Agatha sometimes made such singular remarks;—they were uttered with the utmost simplicity and _naïveté_, her smile was full of sweetness, her tones like the summer breeze when she spoke, and yet the import of her words was excessively cutting and sarcastic. There was often an implied censure in her manner of replying to Alice—not in the words themselves, but rather in their application, which the young wife, sick and dispirited, felt perhaps too keenly. Alice was uncomfortable and yet she scarcely could tell why. A shadow was resting upon her path, and she felt, although she saw it not, that there was a cloud in her sunny sky. The idea that she was no longer absolutely essential to her husband’s comfort sometimes crossed her mind. During the many hours which she was obliged to spend in her own apartment, she found that Henry was fully occupied with his game of chess, or his favorite book in company with cousin Agatha, and though it seemed only a realization of her own wishes, yet she was not prepared to find herself so entirely thrown into the back-ground of the family picture. At length Alice became a mother, and in the new emotions awakened in her bosom, she forgot her vague feelings of discomfort. Mr. Wentworth was too proud and happy to think of anything but his boy, and when Alice beheld him bending over their cradled treasure with a feeling almost of awe as well as love, she wondered how she could ever have felt unhappy for a moment. Cousin Agatha seemed to share in all their joy, and in the presence of the father she fondled and caressed the child as gracefully as possible. “Do you not think, Alice,” said she one day, as she sat with the babe lying on her lap, while Wentworth bent fondly over it, “do you not think your sweet little Harry resembles poor Charles Wilson?” “No, indeed I do not,” exclaimed Alice, quickly, while the blood mounted to her pallid cheek and brow. “Well, I certainly see a strong likeness; there is the same peculiar dimple in the chin, which neither you nor Mr. Wentworth have, and even the color of his eyes reminds me of Charles,” said cousin Agatha.