"My mother!" ejaculated Rosamond, and drawing away her hand from her husband, she covered her face and wept. He reproached himself for his transient oblivion of her sorrow, and in endeavouring to soothe it, Eugenia was for a while forgotten. But he little dreamed of the fountain of Rosamond's tears. It would have been difficult for herself to have analyzed the strange feelings struggling within her. The _bosom serpent_, of whose existence she had been previously unconscious, then wound its first cold coil in her heart, and instead of shuddering at its entrance, and closing its portals on the deadly guest, she allowed it to wind itself in its deepest foldings, where its hissings and writhings were no less terrible, because unheard and unseen. Rosamond from earliest childhood had been the object of exclusive devotion from those she loved. She had never known a sharer in her mother's love, for unhappily she was an only child. The undivided fondness of her husband had hitherto been all that her exacting heart required. Now, she must admit an acknowledged sharer of his thoughts and affections, not as an occasional visiter, but as an constant inmate, an inseparable companion. The hallowed privacy of the domestic altar was destroyed, for the foot of the stranger had desecrated it. She could no longer appropriate to herself every look and smile of him, whose glances and smiles she believed her own inalienable right. If she walked abroad, another beside herself, must henceforth lean upon his arm. If she remained at home, another must also be seated at his side. And this invasion of her most precious immunities, was not to be endured for a short season, for weeks or months, but years, perhaps for life. These new and evil anticipations swept darkly across the troubled surface of Rosamond's mind, as she gazed on the varying countenance of Eugenia, and wondered she had never thought her handsome before. The gratitude and sensibility that beamed from her eyes whenever they turned on her benefactor, seemed to her diseased imagination the harbingers of a warmer emotion, and the constitutional ardour and frankness of her expressions were indicative of the most dangerous of characters. It was well for Rosamond that the recent death of her mother was a legitimate excuse for her pensiveness and gloom, as the incipient stage of the malady that was beginning to steal into her soul must otherwise have been perceived. Cecil, frank, confident, and unsuspecting, never dreamed that every attention bestowed on Eugenia was considered as a robbery to herself. Eugenia, warm-hearted, impulsive, and grateful, as little imagined that the overflowings of her gratitude were construed into feelings she would have blushed to have cherished. Cecil was passionately fond of music. Since her mother's death, Rosamond could not be prevailed upon to touch the keys of the instrument, and he was too kind to urge upon her a task repugnant to her feelings. But when Eugenia discovered that