De Molton followed his mother, and in her found a sympathizing listener--one who entered into all his difficulties, and who was ready to love poor Blanche for appreciating her own dear Frank as he deserved. But she saw that, deeply as his affections were engaged, their union was impracticable; and she was obliged, though most reluctantly, to confess that a temporary absence, and entire change of scene, were likely to spare his feelings and principles many a trial. Lady Cumberworth entreated her husband not to annoy poor Frank by any allusion to his unfortunate attachment. "Lord bless the fellow!" exclaimed Lord Cumberworth, "I never meant to annoy him! I know he is d--shly in love, and that is all I said! And I only said, he could not marry, and that he knows well enough!" "He is unhappy, and we must refrain from remarks that wound his delicacy just now." "Delicacy--fiddlestick! You always did spoil that boy--and you will make him as full of feelings, and nerves, and refinement, as the most fanciful woman of you all!" The young ladies also met in a nocturnal synod. "What is this love of Frank's?" exclaimed Mary. "How papa made him blush!" said Laura. "And is he really going to India?" asked Charlotte. "Who is the girl?" inquired Emily. "And why could not mamma talk to him before us, I wonder?" added Katherine, the youngest, who was rather pert. "When you are a little older, you will know that people do not like to discuss _les affaires du cœur en pleine salle_," answered Jane the eldest; and with a dignified air she retired to bed. "I suppose Jane wishes to persuade us she has some love affairs of her own, though we know nothing about them," continued the merry Katherine: "she has preserved a most dignified mystery upon the subject, ever since I have been grown up." After a few more questions which could elicit no answers, seeing that all parties were equally in the dark, the sisters separated for the night, and all found the repose they sought except Lady Cumberworth, who acutely felt the approaching separation from her son, and still more the pain that darling son was doomed to endure. Lady Cumberworth was not one who considered the sufferings of lovers as matter for sport;--she had been fervently attached in her early youth, and the object of that attachment had been snatched from her by death. On her side, as well as on her husband's, their marriage had been one of reason and of expediency. But she had made him an excellent wife, had borne him a large family, and they had always been a happy and affectionate couple--happier, perhaps, than if one of the parties, and only one, had felt more warmly. In a fortnight from the time De Molton joined his family at Brighton, he tore himself from the arms of his sisters, and, lastly, from the long, speechless, close embrace of his mother, to whose more sad and sacred affection all instinctively yielded the parting caress.