"Hush!" answered Percy, almost sternly, for there were times when he could quite throw off the boy. "This is no light or common matter, to affect my mother thus. Shall we send for Mr. Howard, mother?" he continued, fondly; "in my father's absence he is your ablest friend--we can only feel, not counsel." But there are times when feeling can aid in bringing back control and strength, when counsel alone would seem so harsh and cold, we can only weep before it; and the fond affection of her children, the unusual assumption of protecting manliness in Percy, so touchingly united with the deep respect that prevented the least intrusive question as to the cause of her distress till she chose to reveal it, gave her power to send back the tears that had escaped at first so hot and fast, and though still holding his hand, as if its very pressure was support, she was enabled calmly to relate the fatal discovery of that evening. Its effect was, in truth, as if a thunderbolt had fallen in the midst of them. An execration, forcibly checked, but passionate as his nature, burst from the lips of Percy, as he clamped his arm close round his mother, as thus to protect her from the misery he felt himself. Herbert, with a low cry of pain, buried his face in his hands. Caroline, shocked and bewildered, but her first thought for her mother, could only look at, and feel for her, quite forgetting that her every prejudice against Ellen did indeed seem fulfilled. Emmeline at first looked stunned, then sinking down at Mrs. Hamilton's feet, hid her face on her lap, and sobbed with such uncontrolled violence, that it might have seemed as if she herself, not Ellen, were the guilty cause of all this misery. Miss Harcourt, like Caroline, could only think and feel for Mrs. Hamilton; for she knew so well all the hope, interest, and love which Ellen had excited, and what must be the bitter suffering of this fearful disappointment. "Do not weep thus, love," Mrs. Hamilton said, addressing Emmeline, after nearly a quarter of an hour had passed, and the various emotions of each individual had found vent in words well illustrative of their respective characters; all but Emmeline who continued to sob so painfully, that her mother successfully forgot her own sorrow to comfort her. "Ellen is still very young, and though she is giving us all this misery and disappointment now, she may become all we can wish her, by-and-by. We must not give up all hope, because now all my cares seem so blighted. There is some fatal mystery attached to her conduct; for I am indeed deceived if she is not very wretched and there is some hope in that."