The tears rose in her eyes as she spoke, and Lady Hastings made her sit down by her bedside, saying--"Nay, my dear child, do not suffer yourself to be so much agitated. I did not know till the other day," she said, feeling some self-reproach at having been brought to play the part she had acted lately, "I did not know till the other day that you were really so much in love, my Emily. But I have known what such feelings are, and can sympathize with you. Indeed I should have yielded long ago if it had not been for the persuasions of that horrid Mrs. Hazleton. She always stood in the way of every thing I wanted to do, and would not even let me know the truth about your real feelings--pretending all the time to be my friend too!" "She has been a friend to none of us, I fear," replied Emily, "and to me especially an enemy; although I cannot at all tell what I ever did to merit such pertinacious hatred as she seems to feel towards me." "Do you know, my child," said Lady Hastings, with a meaning smile, "I have been sometimes inclined to think that she wished to marry Marlow herself?" Emily started and looked aghast, and then that delicate feeling, that sensitiveness for the dignity of woman's nature, which none, I suspect, but woman's heart can clearly comprehend, caused her cheek to glow like a rose with shame at the very thought of a woman loving unloved, and seeking unsought. She felt, however, at once, that there might be--that there probably was--much truth in what her mother said, that she had touched the true point, and had discovered one at least of the causes of Mrs. Hazleton's strange conduct. Nevertheless, she answered, "Oh, dear mother, I hope it is not so. Sure I am that Marlow would never trifle with any woman's love, and I cannot think that Mrs. Hazleton would so degrade herself as even to dream of a man who never dreamt of her; besides, she is old enough to be his mother." "Not quite, my child, not quite," replied Lady Hastings. "She is, I believe, younger than I am; and though old enough to be your mother, Emily, I could not have been Marlow's, unless I had married at ten years old. Besides, she is very beautiful, and she knows it, and may have thought that such beauty as hers, and her great wealth, might well make up for a small difference of years." "Perhaps you are right," replied Emily, thoughtfully, as many a circumstance flashed upon her memory, which had seemed, to her dark and mysterious in times past; but to which the cause suggested by her mother seemed now to afford a key. "But if it was me, only, she hated," added Emily, "why should she so persecute my father and yourself?"