Eugenia cast one glance, then turned away with a deep sigh. The contrast of her own tawny visage and meagre limbs with the fair, bright, round, joyous face and glowing lineaments of Rosamond, was too painful; but Rosamond loved to linger where a comparison so favourable to herself could be drawn, and her kind feelings to Eugenia rose in proportion to the self-complacency of which she was the cause. It was a happy little circle which met that evening around Mrs. Clifford's table. Mrs. Clifford was happy in the new claim she had acquired over Cecil Dormer, and the probable influence it might exert on her future plans. Rosamond was happy in enacting the character of Lady Bountiful, and being praised by Cecil Dormer; and Cecil himself was happy in the consciousness of having performed a benevolent action. Eugenia's spirits had been so crushed by sorrow and unkindness, it seemed as if their elastic principle were destroyed. She was gentle, but passive, and appeared oppressed by the strangeness of her situation. Yet, as she expressed no vulgar amazement at the elegancies that surrounded her, and had evidently been taught the courtesies of society, Mrs. Clifford became convinced that Dormer was right in his belief that she was of gentle blood, and the fear that Rosamond's manners might be injured by contact with an unpolished plebeian subsided. When Eugenia was somewhat accustomed to her new situation, Mrs. Clifford questioned her minutely with regard to her parentage and the peculiar circumstances of her mother's death. She gathered from her broken and timid answers, that her father was wealthy, and that the first years of her life were passed in affluence; that as she grew older her mother seemed unhappy and her father stern and gloomy, why she could not tell; that one night, during her father's absence, her mother had left her home, accompanied by herself and one servant girl, and taken passage in a steamboat for that city. They boarded in obscure lodgings, never went abroad, or received visiters at home. Her mother grew paler and sadder. At length the servant girl, who seemed greatly attached to them, died. Then she described her mother as being much distressed for money to pay her board, being obliged to part with her watch and jewels, and when these resources failed, thankful to obtain sewing from her landlady, or, through her, from others. As they became more wretched and helpless, they were compelled to go from house to house, where her mother could find employment, till she was taken sick at Mrs. Grundy's, and never lifted her head again from the pillow so grudgingly supplied. A diamond ring, the most valued and carefully preserved of all her jewels, procured for her the sad privilege of dying there. Over her consequent sufferings Eugenia only wept, and on this subject Mrs. Clifford had no curiosity.