This is, I suppose, a very common state of affairs, and one which is found existing everywhere; but it is difficult to describe the effect it produced in the house where a little while ago each believed himself and herself ready to give up anything or everything for the other, and in which there was but one heart and one aim. Mrs. Eastwood was driven from her old standing-ground altogether. She had no longer any faith in herself or her motives. She felt all the gentle security of well-doing, which had been in her life, to glide away from her. She was not willing, as she thought she had been, to denude herself for her children. Their desire to get as much as they could out of her, revolted her mind and chilled her heart. Frederick had left her in no doubt that this was his sentiment. And Nelly? Could Nelly be of the same mind? Oh, no, not Nelly! but, at least, Ernest, who was to be Nelly’s husband, who would take her from her mother, and no doubt persuade her to think with him--at least, when she was his wife. Mrs. Eastwood felt that the virtue upon which she had made her stand, the great principle of her life, no longer animated her, and she no longer believed in herself. She felt that her children were no longer wholly hers, but had become separate, and even antagonist powers thinking chiefly of themselves; and she ceased to believe in them. Thus her entire moral atmosphere was changed, the foundations of the very earth unsettled, the time put out of joint. She groped vainly for something to guide her out of the maze, and found nothing. Her comely face became full of anxious lines, and care crept over her like a cold shadow. This was how the changes, present and to come, in the family existence, affected its head.