Shortly after Mr. Holdfast's second marriage, he communicated to his son the news of his having chosen a beautiful and amiable woman as a companion. In his letter the father expressed a hope that his son, who had already done so much to wound a father's heart, would not add to his misconduct by behaving other than dutifully and respectfully to his second mother. The son wrote back that he had no second mother, and would acknowledge none; but that he would soon be in London to embrace his father and shake hands with his father's wife. Attention is directed to the terms of this expression of feeling. His father he would embrace, his father's wife he would shake hands with. To one he would exhibit affection, to the other coldness. There was here at once struck the keynote to many strange family events (in one of which the affections were made to play a monstrous part), leading, there is reason to believe, to the untimely death of a father who sinned only on the side of indulgence and love. "I had, from the first," said the widow of the murdered man, "a mysterious foreboding about Frederick Holdfast. Do not ask me to account for it, for it is out of my power. I am a creature of feeling and fancy, but I am seldom wrong. I sometimes shudder when I pass a stranger in the street, and I know--something whispers within me--that that stranger has committed a crime, or is about to commit a crime. I sometimes feel glad when I meet a person for the first time, as I have met you"--(she was addressing our Reporter)--"and then I know that that person is an honourable man, and that I can confide in him. I had a foreboding for ill when I first heard the name of Mr. Frederick Holdfast. I shuddered and turned as cold as ice; and that was even before I knew that his father and he were not upon friendly terms. I tried to shake off the feeling, asking myself how was it possible there could be any real wickedness in the son of a man so noble as my dear lost husband? Alas! I have lived to discover that my foreboding of evil was but too true!" Mr. Frederick Holdfast came to London, and made the acquaintance of his stepmother. He had rooms in his father's house, but his habits were very irregular. He seldom dined with his father and his father's wife, as he insisted upon calling her: he would not accompany them to ball or party--for, from the date of his second marriage, Mr. Holdfast led a new and happier life. He gave balls and parties at home, of which his wife was the queen of beauty; he went into society; the gloom which had been habitual with him departed from his heart. But the son would not share this happiness; he was the thorn in the side of the newly-married couple. We continue the narrative in the widow's words.