“I have been taunted by that woman with her love for another man, and I cannot leave my children in her keeping. They must be delivered up to me.” “They shall—they shall, Mr. Cresford. I pledge myself that before evening they shall be sent to you, at any place you may appoint.” “I am at the hotel opposite, sir, and there I await them within the next two hours.” He darted down the stairs, and out of the house. The terrified children hung round their mother; Captain Wareham supported her; Caroline—Matilda rushed in. Concealment was no longer practicable—despair and consternation prevailed through the whole house. The two Miss Parkses, who had been “the company in the front drawing-room,” discreetly took their departure, but not before they had seen and heard enough to be perfectly _au fait_ as to the cause of the confusion, and, in a quarter-of-an-hour, the fact of Mrs. Hamilton’s first husband’s return was known in every house in the Close, and in half-an-hour more throughout the whole town. But one feeling, however, prevailed—sincere sorrow for the unfortunate Ellen! Her manners were so gentle, she had not an enemy—her conduct so irreproachable, that even the slander of a country-town coterie had never approached her name. Every one felt disposed to be angry with Mr. Cresford for being alive, and many a parent made use of the event to impress upon the minds of their children the dreadful consequences of a deviation from truth, under any circumstances whatsoever. Why should we return to the scene where Ellen is helplessly kissing her two elder children, while they are as helplessly hanging around her? The idea of resistance never for a moment crossed her. The strong arm of the law she knew could wrest them from her—there was no hope of touching Cresford’s heart. Ellen thought this was the bitterest drop of all, in her cup of woe. To be parted from the beings over whose welfare, bodily and mental, she had so carefully watched; in whom she had with tender, and patient care, sown the seeds of good, which she now saw every day bearing fruit according to her most sanguine wishes! The instinctive bond between mother and child may be equally strong at all ages; but when, in addition to the natural pang at such a tie being severed, there is the sorrowful and disappointing prospect of seeing your labour of love all wasted, and the grief of seeing your sorrow shared by the innocent sufferers, there can be no anguish more poignant, more hopeless.