in every circle, and be the grand
subject of the pros and cons of every paltry journal, ah, Venetia! you
know not, you cannot understand, it is impossible you can comprehend,
the bitterness of such a lot.'

'My beloved mother!' said Venetia, with streaming eyes, 'you cannot
have a feeling that I do not share.'

'Venetia, you know not what I had to endure!' exclaimed Lady Annabel,
in a tone of extreme bitterness. 'There is no degree of wretchedness
that you can conceive equal to what has been the life of your mother.
And what has sustained me; what, throughout all my tumultuous
troubles, has been the star on which I have ever gazed? My child! And
am I to lose her now, after all my sufferings, all my hopes that she
at least might be spared my miserable doom? Am I to witness her also a
victim?' Lady Annabel clasped her hands in passionate grief.

'Mother! mother!' exclaimed Venetia, in agony, 'spare yourself, spare
me!'

'Venetia, you know how I have doted upon you; you know how I have
watched and tended you from your infancy. Have I had a thought, a
wish, a hope, a plan? has there been the slightest action of my life,
of which you have not been the object? All mothers feel, but none ever
felt like me; you were my solitary joy.'

Venetia leant her face upon the table at which she was sitting and
sobbed aloud.

'My love was baffled,' Lady Annabel continued. 'I fled, for both our
sakes, from the world in which my family were honoured; I sacrificed
without a sigh, in the very prime of my youth, every pursuit which
interests woman; but I had my child, I had my child!'

'And you have her still!' exclaimed the miserable Venetia. 'Mother,
you have her still!'

'I have schooled my mind,' continued Lady Annabel, still pacing the
room with agitated steps; 'I have disciplined my emotions; I have felt
at my heart the constant the undying pang, and yet I have smiled, that
you might be happy. But I can struggle against my fate no longer. No
longer can I suffer my unparalleled, yes, my unjust doom. What have I
done to merit these afflictions? Now, then, let me struggle no more;
let me die!'

Venetia tried to rise; her limbs refused their office; she tottered;
she fell again into her seat with an hysteric cry.

'Alas! alas!' exclaimed Lady Annabel, 'to a mother, a child is
everything; but to a child, a parent is only a link in the chain of
her existence. It was weakness, it was folly, it was madness to stake
everything on a