He remembered that throughout the various stations into which society has divided human beings, adversity and pain belong to each, and that death and treachery are more frightful evils than all the hardships of life. He thought of his unborn child, and of his duties towards it--not only in a worldly point of view, but as its teacher and guide in morals and religion. The beauty and use of the ties of blood, to which his peculiar situation had hitherto blinded him, became intelligible at once to his heart and his understanding; and while he felt how ill his father had fulfilled the paternal duties, he resolved that his own offspring should never have cause to reproach him for similar misconduct. Before he had repined because the evils of his lot seemed gratuitous suffering; but now he felt, as Ethel had often expressed it, that the sting of humiliation is taken from misfortune, when we nerve ourselves to endure it for another's sake. CHAPTER XII The world had just begun to steal Each hope that led me lightly on, I felt not as I used to feel, And life grew dark and love was gone. THOMAS MOORE. While the young pair were thus struggling with the severe visitation of adversity, Lady Lodore was earnestly engaged in her endeavours to extricate them from their difficulties. The ardour of her zeal had made her take the first steps in this undertaking, with a resolution that would not look behind, and a courage not to be dismayed by the dreary prospect which the future afforded. The scheme which she had planned, and was now proceeding to execute, was unbounded in generosity and self-sacrifice. It was not in her nature to stop short at half-measures, nor to pause when once she had fixed her purpose. If she ever trembled on looking forward to the utter ruin she was about to encounter, her second emotion was to despise herself for such pusillanimity, and to be roused to renewed energy. She intended to devote as much as was necessary of the money arising from the sale of her jointure, as fixed by her marriage settlement, for the liquidation of her son-in-law's debts. The remaining six hundred a-year, bequeathed to her in Lord Lodore's will, under circumstances of cruel insult, she resolved to give up to her daughter's use, for her future subsistence. She hoped to save enough from the sum produced by the disposal of her jointure, to procure the necessaries of life for a few years, and she did not look beyond. She would quit London for ever. She must leave her house, which she had bought during her days of prosperity, and which she had felt so much pride and delight in adorning with every luxury and comfort: to crown her good work, she intended to give it up to Ethel. And then with her scant means she would take refuge in the solitude where Lodore found her, and spend the residue of her days among the uncouth and lonely mountains of Wales, in poverty and seclusion. It was from no agreeable association with her