Years rolled on, and the dear child lived in blissful ignorance of her origin and desolate condition, till the jealousy of her younger sisters excited her suspicions, and she began to mistrust the genuineness, as she felt the coldness, of that parental affection which the pretended authors of her existence so long counterfeited. During many months, if not years, these suspicions preyed on the poor girl's mind; and though she never dared to mention them to any save old Judy, the negro woman, she felt satisfied that her sisters and herself could not belong to the same stock or the same race. The transparent delicacy of her complexion, the rosy tint on her cheek, unrivalled by the costly paint of her sisters, the shining blackness of her splendid hair,--all these circumstances pointed her out and proclaimed her as of a different race to those whom she hitherto regarded as her kindred. Long had she mused on the cause of this disparity, and much had she suffered, in the depth of her soul, from the representations and suggestions of her active imagination in reference to her origin, and many were the tears shed by her while oppressed with these doubts. But the events of this day, added to the late insolent conduct of her sisters, which provoked the reprimand of her peevish mother guardian, who told her to curb her "Irish temper,"--these cleared up all her doubts; and, filled with a melancholy joy at a revelation she owed to the jealousy and vanity of a proud mother and her daughters, Alia retired to her room to give vent to her feelings in sobs and tears. "Thank God," she cried, "I know what I am, or ought to be. Thank God I am Irish, too, for I often wished I belonged to that much-abused and persecuted people. But O, where shall I find my parents? or how came my lot to be cast in this proud palace, which, alas! I too long regarded as my home? O, who, who will restore this poor 'exile of Erin,' to the home of her unknown parents? How gladly would I exchange all the splendor of this place for the homeliest cot in that land of the shamrock and the cross; ay, the poorest 'cabin, fast by the wild-wood,' in the land of St. Patrick, and my unknown ancestors." Such were the soliloquies of poor, despised Alia, in her room on the third floor, where old aunt Judy, the negro, having missed her favorite from the grand company, after having sought her in vain in the lower saloons of the house, just entered her room. "Dere, now, Miss Ali', am poor aunt Judy half kilt from sarching for you all over. What make you be here, and all the gran' gem'men asking for you?" "Ah, aunt Judy, why have you all along denied of me all knowledge of my extraction, parentage, and race? Did you not know that I was Irish? and yet you always denied that I was, though I have suspected I was, and you must have known it, having lived so long in the family. This is not what I expected from you, aunt Judy," she said, casting a look of gentle reproach at the old negro.