If in ordering a dress for Emily, the milliner made use of those expressions so common in the mouth of every _marchande de modes_. “On ne le porte plus.”—“C’est la mode passée;” she shrunk into herself, and thought “Even the milliner is aware I am excluded from society, and thinks I can know nothing that is going forward in the world.” One morning a young friend of Emily’s called on her at the moment when Lord Sotheron was leaving London to pass a few days in the country, and she thoughtlessly exclaimed, “Oh! what will you do, Lady Emily? You must go to the Spanish ambassador’s ball to-morrow night, and who can you get to chaperon you?” Maria could scarcely command sufficient composure to remain in the room, and to appear engrossed with the book which she had been reading. It often happened that in some morning excursion, Emily was joined by one or two of the young men with whom she had become acquainted. On such occasions the duty of introducing them to her mother devolved on Emily, and she performed the necessary little ceremony with grace and modesty, but with a certain air of shyness and distress. Maria felt that in her case the usual order of things was reversed. She felt that Emily’s acquaintance would look her over with curiosity; she felt that if any one was a serious admirer, his intentions towards the daughter might be influenced, by the disgrace of the mother being thus forced upon his recollection; she felt that Emily was shy, and she fancied she must feel ashamed of her. In this manner all the mortifications of the first years after her divorce were renewed with tenfold bitterness. Perhaps the constant state of painful excitement in which she lived, combined with late hours (for she invariably sat up till Emily’s return), might have aggravated a disorder that soon after assumed a more serious character. Before the London season was over, she became so ill that Emily could no longer be induced to mix in society, but devoted herself to soothing her mother’s hours of sickness. She had a constant difficulty of respiration, a gasping for breath, a palpitation at the heart, for which the physicians recommended quiet of mind and body. When they had left her one day after a long consultation, she smiled, and looking up at Emily, said, “They cannot minister to a mind diseased. It is here, my child, here!” pressing her hand to her heart. “The canker has long been consuming me, and now it will soon have done its work. I wish your brothers were in London, for my end may perhaps be sudden, and I would not pass away without giving them my blessing.” Poor Emily communicated her mother’s wish to Lord Sotheron, and Charles and Edward were summoned from college.