Wrapt in mingling emotions of amazement and alarm, Kate had not heard a light step in the adjoining room; and Lord Effingham, too much engrossed by the passion of the moment, was equally regardless. Both had been standing near the window by which he had entered, while an unseen witness gazed with the fascination of dismay and bitter mortification, through the opposite door, which was partly open. Something had occurred to postpone the debate which Lady Desmond had wished to hear; and scarcely regretting the disappointment in her anxiety to return to Kate, had left town early, and on her arrival at home, having asked if Miss Vernon was at home, and being answered in the affirmative, walked at once to the morning-room they usually occupied; as she crossed the drawing-room communicating with it, she heard, to her astonishment, Lord Effingham's well-known voice, at the moment he raised it exclaiming--"Why talk of Lady Desmond? I never loved her, &c."--and reached the door in time to see him at Kate's feet, as she had longed to see him at her own. Every syllable of that torturing sentence seemed burning into her heart, as retaining sufficient self-command to retire, unseen, she rushed to her own chamber to hide from every eye, but that of the All-seeing, the awful agonies of a desolated spirit. With agonised distinctness, she reviewed the last three months, and in the new and sudden light thus forced upon her, was compelled to own, that, had not previous impressions blinded her judgment, she might have seen she was not Lord Effingham's sole attraction in his frequent visits. Then again came the recollection of a thousand allusions to former scenes and passages in their intercourse, capable of a double signification, on which she had put but one; a thousand looks and tones, slight in themselves, but now irrefragable proofs that she had been duped; and Kate, could she have been a party in the deception, she to whom all the weakness, so carefully hidden from others, had been fully displayed, she on whom Lady Desmond had ever looked as the very personation of truth. Impossible! yet why was Lord Effingham admitted secretly? Why did Kate seem so ready and willing to be left alone? Why did she so pertinaciously endeavour to turn her from her unfortunate attachment; and Lady Desmond groaned aloud as these, to her tempest-tossed mind, incontrovertible proofs of treachery rose up before it. "But his influence is irresistible, and how was she to be wiser than I was. Why am I called beautiful?" And she flew to the glass: it flung back the image of a countenance so darkened and disturbed by the storm within, that she shrank from it. "Ah, she has the lovely freshness of youth, and I, why have I outlived it?" Then she remembered the evident joy of Lord Effingham, the first day he met her at Richmond; she recalled the rapture with, which she had hailed that joy, "and but for her all might have been well; if she had been