had been found out more wicked than was supposed, and her heart swelled with pride and a gratified sense of importance even while she trembled. But the consequences to herself were such as she had never foreseen, and for the moment overwhelmed her altogether. She wept hysterically as she hurried to the village, stumbling over the inequalities of the path, wild with sorrow and anger. She had meant to remain in Madam’s service, though she had done all she could to destroy her. She thought nothing less than that life would go on without much visible alteration, and that she herself, because there was nobody like her, would necessarily remain with the children to whom her care was indispensable. She had brought them all up from their birth. She had devoted herself to them, and felt her right in them almost greater than their mother’s. “My children,” she said, as the butler said “my plate,” and the housemaid “my grates and carpets.” She spent her whole life with them, whereas it is only a part of hers that the most devoted mother can give. The woman, though she was cruel and hard-hearted in one particular, was in this as tender and sensitive as the most gentle and feminine of women. She loved the children with passion. The idea that they could be torn away from her had never entered her mind. What would they do without her? The two little ones were delicate: they required constant care; without her own attention she felt sure they never could be “reared:” and to be driven from them at a moment’s notice, without time to say good-bye! Sobs came from her breast, convulsive and hysterical, as she rushed along. “Oh, my children!” she cried, under her breath, as if it were she who had been robbed, and who refused to be comforted. She passed some one on the way, who stopped astonished, to look after her, but whom she could scarcely see through the mist of her tears, and at last, with a great effort, subduing the passionate sounds that had been bursting from her, she hurried through the nearest corner of the village to her mother’s house, and there, flinging herself down upon a chair, gave herself up to all the violence of that half-artificial, half-involuntary transport known as hysterics. Her mother was old, and beyond such violent emotions; but though greatly astonished, she was not unacquainted with the manifestation. She got up from the big chair in which she was seated, tottering a little, and hurried to her daughter, getting hold of and smoothing out her clinched fingers. “Dear, dear, now, what be the matter?” she said, soothingly; “Sarah, Sarah, come and look to your poor sister. What’s come to her, what’s come to her, the poor dear? Lord bless us, but she do look bad. Fetch a drop of brandy, quick; that’s the best thing to bring her round.”