The old lady had finished folding and packing away her bed and table linen, and locking the clothes press she took up her candle and bidding Rosalia good night, left the room. Poor Rosalia! by the miserable failure of her education she had been sent into the world, into life, beautiful, fragrant, tempting, and defenceless as the conservatory exotic. Nurtured in the warm atmosphere of an enervating tenderness, she lived only in the love of those around her, and pined when it was withdrawn as the flowers languish in the cold. Rosalia was drooping—winter was approaching, yet the face of nature was not fading, withering from the withdrawal of the sun’s direct rays, faster than was Rosalia’s heart in the surrounding atmosphere of coldness. The whole house was a chill clime, in which there was but one spot of warmth, the crib of Hagar’s children. The whole day was a dreary blank, until the evening hour of music came, when she would try to please and cheer by her little songs. The whole family seemed strange, cold, or indifferent to her with one exception, Raymond Withers. _His_ manner was always affectionate, his glance always fell gently on her eye, his tones smoothly, softly on her ear, his hand tenderly on her arm, and the doomed girl began, if not to love him only of all the family, at least to find return only in his love. As yet this affection of Rosalia was as pure as the maiden’s love for all others. Had Rosalia’s intellect and conscience, her moral accountability for the use of time and talent, been cultivated in the same proportion as her sensibilities and affections, she would not have been thrown thus helpless upon the tenderness and sympathy of others; she would have possessed a self-sustaining principle, would have found occupation in mental resources. But this was not so; she had been fondled, praised, and spoiled, until intellect was half drowned in sensibility, mind enervated nearly to fatuity.