and pride to him. "If her person has improved only half as much as her mind," he would say, "she cannot be ugly." Rosamond, who had been her daily associate, was hardly sensible of the gradual transformation that was going on in her external appearance. The strength of her first impression remained, and whenever she thought of Eugenia, she remembered her as she stood, pale and hollow-eyed, by her side, before the mirror, which gave back the blooming image of her own juvenile beauty. Still, though she felt her immeasurable superiority to this poor, dependent girl, she was agitated at her coming, and regretted the commanding claims she had on her husband's kindness and protection. "Can this indeed be Eugenia?" exclaimed Cecil, in a tone of delighted surprise, when, unbonneted and unshawled, she stood before him, tearful, smiling, and agitated. "Rosamond, are we not deceived? Tell me, can this indeed be our Eugenia?" "It is indeed that Eugenia whom your bounty has cherished, the child whom you"--Eugenia paused in unconquerable emotion, and clasped her hands together with characteristic fervour and grace. Cecil was deeply affected. He recollected the little girl whose emaciated features told a tale of such unutterable woe, whose shoulders were furrowed with bleeding streaks, whose cries of agony had pierced the silence of his evening walk. He contrasted the image drawn on his remembrance, with the figure of exquisite symmetry, the face moulded into the softness of feminine loveliness, the eyes of such rare beauty and lustre, that they actually illuminated her whole countenance. His heart swelled with the consciousness of rewarded benevolence, it softened into tenderness towards every human being, and overflowed with a love for Rosamond, such as he had never felt before. So true it is that the exercise of every kind and generous affection increases the soul's capacities for loving, instead of draining and impoverishing them. "You must henceforth be sisters," said he, taking a hand of each, and seating himself between them. "I need not tell you to love each other as such. I am sure that injunction is unnecessary. But there is one task I must impose upon you, Rosamond. You must teach Eugenia to look upon me as a brother, a friend, not as a benefactor, for I feel repaid a thousand times over, for all I have done for her, in the happiness of this moment. Let the idea of obligation be banished for ever, and we can be the happiest trio in the universe, bound together by a threefold and indissoluble cord."