"Year succeeded year, during which time I received many cruel insults from my husband, many horrible ones from my son; for I had been advised to institute a suit against my lord, in which I only pleaded for the return of my children. I lost my cause, owing, I hope, to bad counsel, not the laws of my country. I was adjudged to be separated from the earl, with a maintenance of six hundred a-year, which he hardly pays. I was tied down never to speak to him, nor to his son nor his daughter. Though this sentence was passed, I never acknowledged its justice, but wrote several times to my children. Lord Harwold, who is too deeply infected with his father's cruelty, has either returned my letters unopened or with insulting replies. For my daughter, she keeps an undeviating silence; and I have not even seen her since the moment in which she was hurried from my eyes in Tinemouth Park. "In vain her brother tries to convince me that she detests me. I will not believe it; and the hope that, should I survive her father, I may yet embrace my child, has been, and will be, my source of maternal comfort until it be fulfilled, or I bury my disappointment in the grave." Lady Tinemouth put her handkerchief to her eyes, which were again flowing with tears. Thaddeus thought he must speak, if he would not betray an interest in her narrative, which he determined no circumstance should ever humble him to reveal. Raising his head from his hand, he unconsciously discovered to the countess his agonized countenance. "Kind, affectionate Constantine! surely such a heart as thine never would bring sorrow to the breast of a virtuous husband! You could never betray the self-deluded Lady Sara to any fatal error!" Lady Tinemouth did not utter these thoughts. Thaddeus rose from his seat. "Farewell, my honored friend!" said he; "may Heaven bless you and pardon your husband!" Then grasping her hand, with what he intended should be a pressure of friendship, but which his internal tortures rendered almost intolerable, he hastened down stairs, opened the outward door, and got into the street. Unknowing and heedless whither he went, with the steps of a man driven by the furies, he traversed one street and then another. As he went along, in vain the watchmen reminded him by their cries that it was past three o'clock: he still wandered on, forgetting that it was night, that he had any home, any destination. His father was discovered!--that father of whom he had entertained a latent hope, should they ever meet, that he might produce some excuse for having been betrayed into an act disgraceful to a man of honor. But when all these filial dreams were blasted by the conviction that he owed his being to the husband of Lady Tinemouth, that his mother was the victim of a profligate, that he had sprung from a man who was not merely a villain, but the most wanton, the most despicable of villains, he saw himself bereft of hope and overwhelmed with shame and horror.