etia stood by her in silence;
her eye, vacant and wandering, beheld the interior of the casket.
There must have been something in it, the sight of which greatly
agitated her, for Venetia turned pale, and in a moment left the
chamber and retired to her own room.

She locked her door, threw herself in a chair; almost gasping for
breath, she covered her face with her hands. It was some minutes
before she recovered comparative composure; she rose and looked in
the mirror; her face was quite white, but her eyes glittering with
excitement. She walked up and down her room with a troubled step, and
a scarlet flush alternately returned to and retired from her changing
cheek. Then she leaned against a cabinet in thought. She was disturbed
from her musings by the sound of Pauncefort's step along the
vestibule, as she quitted her mother's chamber. In a few minutes
Venetia herself stepped forth into the vestibule and listened. All was
silent. The golden morning had summoned the whole household to its
enjoyment. Not a voice, not a domestic sound, broke the complete
stillness. Venetia again repaired to the apartment of Lady Annabel.
Her step was light, but agitated; it seemed that she scarcely dared
to breathe. She opened the door, rushed to the cabinet, pressed the
spring lock, caught at something that it contained, and hurried again
to her own chamber.

And what is this prize that the trembling Venetia holds almost
convulsively in her grasp, apparently without daring even to examine
it? Is this the serene and light-hearted girl, whose face was like
the cloudless splendour of a sunny day? Why is she so pallid and
perturbed? What strong impulse fills her frame? She clutches in her
hand a key!

On that tempestuous night of passionate sorrow which succeeded the
first misunderstanding between Venetia and her mother, when the voice
of Lady Annabel had suddenly blended with that of her kneeling
child, and had ratified with her devotional concurrence her wailing
supplications; even at the moment when Venetia, in a rapture of love
and duty, felt herself pressed to her mother's reconciled heart, it
had not escaped her that Lady Annabel held in her hand a key; and
though the feelings which that night had so forcibly developed, and
which the subsequent conduct of Lady Annabel had so carefully and
skilfully cherished, had impelled Venetia to banish and erase from her
thought and memory all the associations which that spectacle, however
slig