Had Cecil observed the heightened colour of Rosamond, he might have conjectured that all was not right in her bosom, but she sat in the shadow of a curtain, and her emotion was unperceived. A few evenings afterwards, they were walking together, when they met a woman bustling through the streets, with her arm a-kimbo, and an air of boldness and defiance, that spoke the determined Amazon. Eugenia clung closely to Cecil's arm as she approached, and turned deadly pale; she recognised in those stony eyes and iron features the dreaded Mrs. Grundy, the tyrant of her desolate childhood, and she felt as if the thong were again descending on her quivering flesh, and the iron again entering into her soul. Such a rush of painful recollections came over her, she was obliged to lean against a railing for support, while Cecil, who saw what was the cause of her agitation, gave a stern glance at the woman, who had stopped, and was gazing in her face with an undaunted stare. "Heyday!" cried she, "who's this? 'Tisn't Giny, sure enough? I never should have thought of such a thing, if it hadn't been for the gentleman. Well! can't you speak to a body, now you have got to be such a fine lady? This is all the gratitude one gets in the world." "Gratitude!" repeated Cecil, "how dare you talk of gratitude to her, before me? Pass on and leave her, and be thankful that your sex shields you a second time from my indignation." "Well you needn't bristle up so, sir," cried she, with a sneer. "I'm not going to kill her. I suppose you've got married to her by this time. But you'd better look sharp, lest she gets into a rambling way, as her mother did before her." With a malignant laugh the virago passed on, delighted to find that she had drawn quite a crowd to the spot where Eugenia still leaned, incapable of motion, and Rosamond stood, pale as a statue, brooding over the words of the woman, as if, like a Delphian priestess, she had uttered the oracles of fate. "Why should she imagine _her_ to be his wife," whispered the bosom serpent, subtle as its arch prototype in the bowers of Eden, "if she had not witnessed in him evidences of tenderness, such as a husband only should bestow? That random sentence spoke volumes, and justifies thy fearful suspicions. Alas for thee, Rosamond! The young blossoms of thy happiness are blighted in the sweet springtime of their bloom. There is no more greenness or fragrance for thee--better that thou hadst died, and been laid by thy mother's side, than live to experience the bitter pangs of deceived confidence and unrequited love."