Gifted with this instinct, there was an intensity in all her enjoyments, which displayed itself in the animation of her manner and the elevated expression of her features. The coldest and most worldly natures are seldom able to resist the influence of this enthusiasm; however hard the metal of their hearts, they must melt beneath this flame. Lady Hester Onslow herself could not remain insensible to the pure sincerity and generous warmth of this artless girl. For a time the combat, silent, unseen, but eventful, was maintained between these two opposite natures, the principle of good warring with the instincts of evil. The victory might have rested with the true cause there was every prospect of its doing so when Sydney Onslow, all whose sympathies were with Kate, and whose alliance had every charm of sisterhood, was suddenly recalled to England by tidings of her aunt's illness. Educated by her aunt Conway, she had always looked up to her as a mother, nor did the unhappy circumstances of her father's second marriage tend to weaken this feeling of attachment. The sad news reached them at Genoa; and Sydney, accompanied by Dr. Grounsell, at once set out for London. If the sudden separation of the two girls, just at the very moment of a budding friendship, was sorrowfully felt by both, to Lady Hester the event was anything but unwelcome. She never had liked Sydney; she now detested the notion of a step-daughter, almost of her own age, in the same society with herself; she dreaded, besides, the influence that she had already acquired over Kate, whose whole heart and nature she had resolved on monopolizing. It was not from any feeling of attachment or affection, it was the pure miser-like desire for possession that animated her. The plan of carrying away Kate from her friends and home had been her own; she, therefore, owned her; the original title was vested in her: the young girl's whole future was to be in her hands; her “road in life” was to be at her dictation. To be free of Sydney and the odious doctor by the same event was a double happiness, which, in spite of all the decorous restraints bad news impose, actually displayed itself in the most palpable form.