"A wedding is expected to take place within the month, at the American Legation in Paris. Mr. Lee, a wealthy landholder of Pennsylvania, is to be married to Mrs. Dennison, a beautiful and fashionable widow, who is said to have been the intimate friend of his first wife." I read this paragraph through. My face must have betrayed the deathly feeling that came over me, for Lottie came behind my chair, read a few words over my shoulder, and snatched the paper from my hand with a suddenness that tore it almost in two. "What is it," inquired Jessie, started by this action--"any--anything about _him_?" "About him? I should think so. Sin, iniquity, and pestilence. Read it, Miss Jessie, I can't; it seems as if a snake were crawling over it." Jessie took the paper, read it, and fainted in her chair. Lottie did not seem to regard the condition of her young mistress, but ran out of the room, clenching her hand fiercely, as if she longed for bitter contest with some one. These paroxysms of feeling had been very unusual with her of late; for in the quiet of our mournful lives, she had been left a good deal to her loneliness in the tower, where she still kept guard over Mrs. Lee's chamber. Sometimes she reverted to the past, and would ask anxiously if I knew where Babylon was spreading her plumes. But I had no means of informing her, being in profound ignorance of that lady's movements from the time she left our house. This would satisfy Lottie; but I remarked that she had taken a sudden and deep interest in her geographical studies, for I seldom went to her room without finding an atlas open upon the table, and a gazetteer close by, which she seemed to have been diligently studying. I had thought but little of these things at the time; but they came back to me with force on the very next day, when Lottie came to me in the garden, and inquired anxiously if Miss Jessie wasn't just breaking her heart over that paragraph in the newspaper. I answered that Miss Lee was very sad and unhappy, certainly. "I knew it--I was sure of it," cried the girl, with quick tears in her eyes. "It will kill her--she will pine away like her mother. You know she will, Miss Hyde." "I'm afraid so, Lottie." "Afraid, and stand by doing nothing but bathe her head with cologne, and cry over her. That isn't the way to cure all this, Miss Hyde." "But what else can I do, Lottie?" "You? Nothing." She went off to a flower-bed, tore some mignonette up by the roots, tossed it from her, and came back again. "Miss Hyde, I am tired to death of all this. The house isn't fit to live in since my dear, sweet lady was taken from it. There's been nothing but sickness, and quarrelling, and going away since, and I've about made up my mind to go away too. I can't stand it, and I won't, so there!" "Why, Lottie," I cried, lost in astonishment, "what does this mean?"