“Mother,” said Mrs. Townsend Oakley, lifting her eyes gently from the needle-work with which she was employed, “why was it that you took so strong a dislike to the De Markes?” Mrs. Judson lifted her eyes to the face of her daughter, and kept them upon it so long that a burning crimson spread over the fair cheeks and forehead. “Why did I dislike the family, daughter? Because the woman who called herself the head was in every respect unworthy.” “But the son, mother, surely he was a gentleman.” “He was a villain?” answered Mrs. Judson, with a degree of sternness that made her daughter start, and brought a deluge of fiery blood to her face. “How? Why, mother, I never heard a word against him in my life before!” “Probably not; but had you searched deep enough, acts, rather than opinions, would have settled the truth of what I say. Your husband’s sister died in a charity hospital. He it was who sent her there.” “Mother, mother!” The poor young woman gasped for breath. She could no longer syllable the words that rose to her lips, but with a faint struggle fell back insensible in her chair. Mrs. Judson arose with a heavy frown, and bent over her child. All of human feeling that she possessed was centred in her, and this sudden indisposition terrified her more from its cause than in itself. With trepidation she wheeled the easy-chair close to an open window and sprinkled the pale face with water. The effect was rapid. After a moment the white eyelids began to tremble, and the young widow fell into a fit of bitter weeping. “My child—my child, what is this?” exclaimed Mrs. Judson, in a voice that betrayed the struggle of affright, tenderness, and severity going on in her bosom. “Nothing, mother. You were so abrupt in telling me of poor Louisa: even now I do not understand it. I knew that Catharine Lacy, my own cousin, was in a hospital, and perhaps died there; but Louisa, indeed I can hardly believe it.” “It was the truth, though.” “But, mother, Townsend always thought she died at your house.” “How was I to tell him otherwise? He would always have censured me for leaving her with the servants,—he would never have believed that a creature so young could have outwitted us all, and concealed herself, even in the greatest extremities, up to the very day of her death. She was dead, and I informed him of the fact. The particulars would have aggravated his grief.” “And how did you learn these particulars, mother?” asked the widow, with a degree of self-control that kept her face white as snow. “I saw her myself, in the hospital.” “You saw her? She told you this with her own lips?” “She was dead and in her coffin.” “But you saw her and took her away then?” “I saw and recognized her; she was buried from my house, and with that funeral the shameful secret died.” “Poor, poor girl; how Townsend did love her!” sobbed the widow. “It would have broken his heart.”