. But come! perhaps her dear face will look smilingly at me again: how I will kiss her if it does!"

But the warm heart was again chilled to its very core by the look Mrs. Mowbray wore as the two girls entered the room. Fanny was already seated next her. This was a place often playfully contested between the sisters, and Helen thought, as she approached the door, that if she could get it, and once more feel her mother's hand between her own, she should be the happiest creature living.

But nothing could be less alike, than what followed her entrance, to the imaginings which preceded it. Mrs. Mowbray was unusually silent to them all, but to Helen she addressed not a single word. This was partly owing to the feeling of displeasure which had recently been so skilfully fastened in her breast, and partly to the anxiety she felt respecting the answer of Sir Gilbert to her note.

In the middle of the silent and nearly untasted meal, the poetical Fanny being in truth the only one who appeared to have much inclination to eat, a salver was presented to Mrs. Mowbray, from whence, with a heightened colour and almost trembling hand, she took a note. She instantly rose from table and left the room. Helen rose too, but not to follow her: she could no longer restrain her tears, and it was to hide this from Fanny, and if possible from Rosalind, that she hastened to leave them both, and shut herself in her own chamber to weep alone.

The present emotion of Helen cannot be understood without referring to the manner in which she had hitherto lived with her mother, and indeed to the general habits of the family. Mystery of any kind was unknown among them; and to those who have observed the effect of this, its prodigious influence on the general tone of family intercourse must be well known. To those who have not, it would be nearly impossible to convey in words an adequate idea of the difference which exists in a household where the parents make a secret of all things of important interest, and where they do not. It is not the difference between ease and restraint, or even that more striking still, between sweet and sour tempers in the chief or chiefs of the establishment; it is a thousand times more vital than either. Without this easy, natural spontaneous confidence, the family union is like a rope of sand, that will fall to pieces and disappear at the first touch of any thing that can attract and draw off its loose and unbound particles. But
