One fine winter’s morning Mrs. Fitz-Eustace and Maria were watching the two noble boys, as with keepers, dogs, and guns, they were before the windows preparing for a shooting expedition. They were talking and laughing joyously with each other, and Maria turning to Mrs. Fitz-Eustace with tearful, but beaming eyes, exclaimed, “I was right, dearest mother, was I not, to tell them every thing? Painful as it was, it has had the desired effect. Oh! how can parents who have nothing to blush for, maintain a causeless and mysterious reserve towards their children! Perhaps many a prodigal might have been prudent and thoughtful, if he had known how, for his sake, his parents were struggling to keep up a decent appearance in the world. Confidence produces confidence, and children would have the habit of communicating each feeling as it arose, and while it was yet capable of being checked, or guided aright.” And as she spoke, she thought if she had felt that tender, fearless, confidence in her parents, perhaps her mother might have read the guilty secret of her heart, and have guarded her against its fatal consequences. The office which Lord Sotheron had so eagerly sought was given to another, and there appeared in the papers a paragraph alluding to the disappointed hopes of a certain noble earl, and the necessity that morality should be upheld by the private, as well as the public, character of those in high official situations. This paragraph met the eye of the two persons to whom it could give the most acute pain. It crushed, it humbled Maria to the very dust. She felt she was, in truth, a blight upon her husband’s prospects, and she sunk under the painful conviction.