Mrs. de Burgh started, and looked a little uncomfortable. "First of all," he added in still lower tones; "but," pausing suddenly, "will you be so good as to tell that young gentleman not to stare me out of countenance," alluding to his cousin's eldest boy, a delicate and serious-looking child, who sat on his mother's sofa, his intelligent eyes with earnest scrutiny rivetted upon Eugene's countenance, as he sat there with bent brow, and dark look of brooding care. "Don't be rude, Charlie; go to the nursery," said his mother, half angry, half amused. "Why do you stare at cousin Eugene? do you not think he is very handsome?" The boy coloured, but rising slowly, as if to escape an answer to the question, murmured evasively: "Yes, I'll go up stairs, and look at my pictures about the dark-looking Cain thinking about his brother Abel." "The strange child," said Mrs. de Burgh, with a little awkward laugh, for she knew the picture to which the child alluded, and was irresistibly struck by the similitude which it seems had suggested the comparison. A dark flush at the same time suffused the temples of her companion; but it had soon passed away. After a momentary pause, drawing near Mrs. de Burgh, and placing his chair a little behind her couch, with eyes bent still on the ground, Eugene resumed the subject thus interrupted. He spoke to her of his brother. We will not detail the conversation, or how much, or in what manner he revealed or confided of that momentous theme. We must not compromise Mrs. de Burgh by supposing it possible she would have made herself privy to any known questionable transaction; suffice it to say, that it was dusk before Eugene Trevor rose to leave her, and that then the cousins parted most amicably. Eugene promised to ride over very soon again; and when he had gone, Mrs. de Burgh after lying still meditating for a short time, aroused herself with the philosophical observation that this was a strange world--rang the bell for lights, which being brought, and her writing materials laid before her, she wrote as follows: "My dearest Mary, "Eugene Trevor has just been here, wretched beyond description, to tell me you have broken off your engagement with him just as matters were beginning to take a favourable turn, and he could marry you to-morrow. I tell him he deserves this for having taxed your patience so long; but that, as you may imagine, gives him little comfort. But, Mary dear, I cannot believe you so very hard-hearted as to place so final an extinguisher on his hopes.