Trifling as domestic disputes may seem in description, they never fail in their painful reality to banish all lasting happiness. Emmeline could bear that her father should prefer Eleanor to herself, but that he should be unjust to her darling Charles, and that Charles should increase this evil by dispute and self-will, tried her severely, and obliged her often and often to fly to the solitude of her own chamber, lest her temper also should fail, and, to defend her brother, she should forget her duty to her father. But with her, Mrs. Harcourt's lessons had indeed been blessed. The spirit of true, heartfelt piety, which she had sought to instill into her youthful charge, even more by the example of her daily life than by precepts, had become Emmeline's, young as she still was, and enabled her not only to bear up against the constant petty annoyances of her home, but the heavy trial sustained in the death of Mrs. Harcourt, just as she was looking forward to her entrance into the gay world, under her maternal guardianship, and her parting with her brother, who, not two months afterward, left her to fulfill his darling wish of going to sea. At eighteen, then, Emmeline Manvers became the mistress of her father's establishment, and had to encounter alone, not only the suffering of bereavement--in which, though Lord Delmont sincerely respected Mrs. Harcourt, he could not sympathize, and at which, after the first shock and momentary remorse for her own conduct to so true a friend, Eleanor, if she did not actually rejoice, felt so very greatly relieved as to be irritated and angry at Emmeline's quiet sorrow--but the separation from her brother and all the cares and disagreeables of such strict economy at home, as would permit the sustaining a proper position in society, so that the necessity of economy should not even be suspected. It was this regard of appearances which so chafed and pained Emmeline's upright and independent spirit. Not that Lord Delmont, even for appearances, would go beyond his income; but still there were obliged concealments and other petty things which his daughter could not bear. Mrs. Harcourt's trial--a widow, compelled not only to teach for a subsistence, but to part with her only child, who had been adopted by a married sister, living in Italy--appeared to Emmeline's ideas of truth and honor preferable to appearing richer than they really were. But on this subject, even less than on any other, she knew there was no chance of sympathy, and so she devoted all the energies of her matured and well-regulated mind to correcting the evil as much as it lay in her individual power; and in the year which her earnest entreaties prevailed on her father to permit her remaining in quiet retirement, before she entered the world, Lord Delmont was astonished at the greater comfort and increase of dignity which pervaded his establishment. He never had chosen Mrs. Harcourt to interfere with his household concerns,