Mrs. Garnet raised her eyes to look upon the bride. She had never seen Miss Seabright before, and now, at the first sight of her magnificently beautiful form and face, Alice started violently: all the blood suddenly left her cheeks for an instant, and then rushed back again, crimsoning her face to the very edges of her hair—so startling, so strong, so painful was the resemblance of Miss Seabright to the late General Garnet. Yes, there was the same majesty and sweetness of mien, the same regal turn of head and neck, the same fiery, dark hair, the same smoldering and flashing eyes, the same beautiful lips, the same bewildering smile. The only difference was that in place of the latent diabolism under General Garnet’s countenance all heaven shone from Miss Seabright’s. Alice felt that she looked upon her late husband’s face, only with its beauty idealized, elevated, made divine. The vague, half-formed suspicions concerning the paternity of Garnet Seabright that had occasionally floated through her mind now became painfully confirmed. As she gazed chills and heats alternately shook her frame, and then a strong, yearning compassion mingled with the high admiration she had hitherto felt for the noble-souled girl, and she said to herself: “I wonder if she knows it?” Then, looking at her more attentively, she exclaimed inwardly: “No, no! she does not know or suspect it! My soul upon it, she does not know or suspect it! No; there is a high self-appreciation, a grandeur in her mien and air, a majesty seated on that pure and lofty brow, unconscious of shame—unconscious of the very possibility of shame! God shield her from the knowledge! for, oh! as I look upon her noble presence now, I feel too surely that the knowledge of her shame would kill her with a stroke swift, sharp, and sure! God shield her from the knowledge! It were sacrilege to discrown that imperial brow of its diadem of unsullied honor, and brand it with shame instead. God shield the innocent from the knowledge of guilt which is infamy! God shield her! Oh, I can now forgive my dead husband for having cheated me out of this beautiful daughter, when I think he had the grace to keep her innocent of the knowledge of her parentage and his guilt. Yet how he must have loved her! Oh, doubtless many times when his brow was overcast with gloom and sullenness, it was with the thought of this child. He never confided his sins or his troubles to me. Would he had! I could have been as much of a friend as a wife to him. Would he had had faith enough in me, when the poor little one was orphaned, to have laid her on my bosom instead of exiling her to that bleak isle! I would have brought her up as my own. Did he dream that I would have been otherwise than good to a little child? But he would not trust me. He could tyrannize over me in a thousand useless ways, yet never could venture to bring the motherless child to my arms. No; he could never tell me until that night, when drunken both with brandy and bad