that it might be granted,--often
seemed creeping into the inmost cell of her ear. She could fancy him
close beside her,--taunting her,--touching her,--till, starting from
her seat, she strove to shake off the hideous delusion. Sometimes
the soft cordial tones of her mother,--her mother, who was in the
grave,--seemed again dispensing those lessons of virtue of which
her own life had afforded so pure an example: sometimes the playful
caresses of her boys seemed to grow warm upon her lips--around her
neck. Yes! she could hear them, see them:--little Charles, who, in
his very babyhood, had been accustomed to uplift his tiny arm in
championship of his own dear mother;--Digby, the soft, tender,
loving infant, whose every look was a smile, whose every action an
endearment!--And now they appeared to pass before her as strangers;
changed--matured--enlightened;--without one word of fondness--one
gesture of recognition!

"From such meditations, how horrible to start up amid the dreariness
of night, nor find a human heart unto which to appeal for comfort,--a
human voice from which to claim reply in annihilation of the spell
that transfixed her mind. The cold cheerless room, the flickering
light, the desolation that was around her, struck more heavily than
ever on her heart. 'Oh! that this were an omen!' she cried, with
clasping hands, as she listened to the howling of the wind upon the
lofty staircase leading to their remote apartments. Drawing closer
over her bosom the wrapper by which she attempted to exclude the
piercing night-air, Amelia smiled at the thought of the chilliness of
the grave,--of the grave, where the heart beats not, and the fixed
glassy eye is incapable of tears.

"'I shall lie among the multitudes of a strange country,' faltered
she; 'there will be no one to point out with officious finger to my
sons, the dishonoured resting-place of their mother,--their _divorced_
mother! Vavasor will be freed from his bondage--free to choose anew,
and commence H more auspicious career. But for me he might have been a
different being. It is _I_ who have hardened his heart and seared his
mind. And oh! may Heaven in its mercy touch them,--that he may deal
gently with me during the last short remnant of our union!'

"A harsh sound interrupted her contemplations;--the grating of his key
in the outer door,--of his step in the ante-room. Mechanically she
rose, and advanced to meet the truant who had kept her watching,--who
had