"Go where you will, it is our special injunction that you leave Miss Egerton behind you. She, we hear, has been the ambassadress in this intrigue. If we learn that you disobey, it shall be worse for you in every respect, as it will convince us, beyond a possibility of doubt, how uniform is the turpitude of your conduct." Lady Tinemouth grasped Miss Beaufort's hand when she laid the matricidal letter back upon the table. "And that is from the son for whom I felt all a mother's throes--all a mother's love!--Had he died the first hour in which he saw the light, what a mass of guilt might he not have escaped! It is he," added she, in a lower voice, and looking wildly round, "that breaks my heart. I could have borne his father's perfidy; but insult, oppression, from my child! Oh, Mary, may you never know its bitterness!" Miss Beaufort could only answer with her tears. After a pause of many minutes, in which the countess strove to tranquillize her spirits, she resumed in a more composed voice. "Excuse me for an instant, my dear Miss Beaufort; I must write to Mr. Constantine. I have yet to inform him that my absence is to be added to his other misfortunes." With her eyes now raining down upon the paper, she took up a pen and hastily writing a few lines, was sealing them when Mary, looking up, hardly conscious of the words which escaped her, said, with inarticulate anxiety, "Lady Tinemouth, you know much of that noble and unhappy young man?" Her eyes irresolute and her cheek glowing, she awaited the answer of the countess, who continued to gaze on the letter she held in her hand, as if in profound thought; then all at once raising her head, and regarding the now downcast face of her lovely friend with tenderness, she replied, in a tone which conveyed the deep interest of her thoughts:-- "I do, Miss Beaufort; but he has reposed his griefs in my friendship and honor, therefore I must hold them sacred." "I will not ask you to betray them," returned Mary, in a faltering voice; "yet I cannot help lamenting his sufferings, and I esteeming the fortitude with which he supports his fall." The countess looked steadfastly on her fluctuating countenance. "Has Constantine, my dear girl, hinted to you that he ever was otherwise than as he now appears?" Miss Beaufort could not reply. She would not trust her lips with words, but shook her head in sign that he had not. Lady Tinemouth was too well read in the human heart to doubt for an instant the cause of her question, and consequent emotion. Feeling that something was due to an anxiety so disinterested, she took her passive hand, and said, "Mary, you have guessed rightly. Though I am not authorized to tell you the real name of Mr. Constantine, nor the particulars of his history, yet let this satisfy your generous heart, that it can never be more honorably employed than in compassionating calamities which ought to wreath his young brows with glory."