appeal to the compassion of Roland--promise this, and you shall find in me a friend who will never forsake you in weal or woe. Deny it, and you will create an enemy whose power can make you tremble." Grace, with all her woman's pride rising to her relief, at the idea of appealing to the compassion of Roland, gave the desired promise, and still more--she voluntarily declared she would rather die than think of Roland, after what Lucy had just uttered. Lucy, satisfied with her promise, for she knew her truth, embraced her with commendations which fell heedlessly on poor Grace's paralyzed ears--she withdrew to her chamber, "for her whole head was pained and her whole heart sick;" and when Mr. Worthington and Roland returned, Grace was said to be unable, from indisposition, to join the circle, where she was wont to preside an angel of light and joy. The sympathy and sorrow excited by so common an event, reconciled Lucy more than anything else, to her selfishness and cruelty. But was she happy in the success of her operations! She had planted thorns in the bosom of another--but were there none rankling in her own! Could she, a daughter of this land of republicanism, shelter herself under the cold shadow of family pride, from the reproaches of her own conscience? Ah! no! the heart is its own avenger, and for every drop of sorrow wilfully wrung from the eyes of another, shall be doomed to give only tears of blood. Roland wondered at the change that had come over Grace, and sought by every means to ascertain the cause, but she seemed wrapped in a cloud of impenetrable reserve. She avoided him, but in so quiet a manner, it appeared to him more the result of sudden indifference or aversion, than unexplained resentment. The sunshine of her smile was gone, and an expression of calm apathy settled on her brow, where the alternations of feeling had lately flitted, like the lights and shadows of a moonlight landscape. Roland sometimes had a painful suspicion of his sister, but she had always been so open in all her actions, so undisguised in her least amiable traits, that notwithstanding all the prejudice she had manifested towards Grace, he believed her incapable of any mean or dark designings. Mr. Worthington was anxious and alarmed. He was sure some incipient and insidious disease was the cause of her pale and dispirited appearance. He was constantly feeling her pulse, and inquiring her symptoms, and insisting upon calling in a physician, till poor Grace, really glad to shelter herself from observation, under the pretext held out, acknowledged herself ill, and passively submitted to a course of medicine, which reduced her soon to a state of real debility and suffering. They applied blisters to her forehead to still its hot throbbings; they drew blood from her veins to reduce her feverish pulse, and Lucy sat by her bedside and administered to her unweariedly, and discussed the nature of her malady, and talked of its