“Now, Mrs. Collins, and Mrs. Barnes, _both_ of you go down to breakfast _together_—you must breakfast together sociably such a dreary day as this; I will mind the babies till you come back.” It was the custom for one of the two matrons to remain in the nursery while the other took her meals. This morning, glad to be relieved by Rosalia’s kindness, they set the room in order, mended the fire, making it blaze cheerfully, and then, while Rose stood up with the children, they wheeled the easy chair in front of it, and left the room together. Rose resumed her seat in front of the blazing fire; it was a large, deep, soft chair, whose wide arms held the maiden and the babies very comfortably. Rose loved luxury, and she revelled with the babies in that easy chair, while the fire glowed before her, and the rain pattered without. Let me strike out a bird’s-eye view of this family as they now stood. It is but daguerreotyping the sky before the descent of the thunderbolt. Raymond walked gloomily up and down the dim vista of the two drawing-rooms, pausing now and then at the windows to look out upon the dense, dark clouds that hung like a pall over all things, and to listen to the beating rain. Hagar sat gloomily in her dressing-room, gloomily as we once saw her sit in her childhood in the attic of Heath Hall. Her elbows propped upon her knees, her pale face dropped in the palms of her hands, while her hair fell out of curl all over her; it was an attitude and expression of utter desolation.—The blackened sky, the beating rain, were unheeded in the deeper darkness of her own heart, in this deep darkness where was gathering the lightning, was lurking the thunderbolt. Rosalia still sat in the large chair playing with the babies, fondled by them, talking that sweet baby-talk, melodious, but unintelligible as a bird-song to any one but women and children. Then the door was thrown widely back, and Hagar stood within it, with her thin face thrown out in ghastly relief by her black hair and black dress; she came towards Rosalia and paused, gazing with an expression of anguish striking fiercely through her set eyes. Rosalia looked up in surprise and distress. “Give me the children, Rosalia! give them to me! they are mine! they are like me! they are _all_ mine! Give them here! You shall not wile _their_ love from me also! Give! give them to me! they are my only consolation. _Why_ don’t you give them to me?” exclaimed she, wildly holding out her arms. Rosalia, in fear and bewilderment, gazed on her with dilated and dilating eyes, scarcely distinguishing, certainly not comprehending, one word of her wild appeal. “Give! give them to me!” again exclaimed Hagar, snatching the children to her bosom, “and go, Rosalia! go! go! go!” Rosalia got up from the chair, and pressing both small hands upon her white temples, stood in amazement. “WILL you go?”