"Name them not, Ruth; name them not, if you love me. To change their hated name, what would I not do?" Alas! thought I, you are deceiving yourself, my poor sister, in this supposed immolation on an altar of sacrifice; it is not for your child's sake alone, though you fancy so. But Blanche Erminstoun will be disappointed, revenge obtained, and pride amply gratified, and truly "the heart is deceitful above all things." Mr. Dacre entered the apartment as Gabrielle ceased speaking, for we had not heard his modest signal, and he was unannounced. My sister colored to the very temples on seeing the young pastor, and her hands trembled in the vain endeavor to fold Lord Treherne's letter, which at length she impatiently crushed together. I heard a half-smothered hysterical sob, as, with a faltering voice, she bade our guest "Good-evening." Ah! when the heart is aching and throbbing with agony, concealed and suppressed, it requires heroic self-command to descend to the commonplaces of this workaday world; but women early learn to conceal and subdue their feelings, when premature sorrows have divided them from real or pretended sympathies. I read my sister's heart, I knew her secret, and I inwardly murmured, "Alas for woman's love, it is cast aside!" * * * * * My sister's marriage with Lord Treherne was a strictly private one (Gabrielle had stipulated for this), his lordship's chaplain performing the ceremony. My thoughts reverted to Gabrielle's first marriage, when the clerk gave her away, and she was clad in muslin; now she was arrayed in satin and glittering gems, and a peer of the realm, an old friend of the bridegroom, gave her lily hand at the altar to her noble lover. Twice she was forsworn; but the desecration to her soul was not so great on the first as on the present occasion, for then her heart was still her own; while now, alas for woman's love, it was cast aside!