mother,' said Venetia, as her mother tenderly
examined her forehead. 'Dear, dear mother, why did you reproach me?'

'Forget it,' said Lady Annabel, in a softened tone; 'for indeed you
are irreproachable.'

'O Annabel!' said Herbert, 'may not this child be some atonement, this
child, of whom I solemnly declare I would not deprive you, though I
would willingly forfeit my life for a year of her affection; and your,
your sufferance,' he added.

'Mother! speak to him,' said Venetia, with her head on her mother's
bosom, who still, however, remained rigidly standing. But Lady Annabel
was silent.

'Your mother was ever stern and cold, Venetia,' said Herbert, the
bitterness of his heart at length expressing itself.

'Never,' said Venetia, with great energy; 'never; you know not my
mother. Was she stern and cold when she visited each night in secret
your portrait?' said Venetia, looking round upon her astonished
father, with her bright grey eye. 'Was she stern and cold when she
wept over your poems, those poems whose characters your own hand had
traced? Was she stern and cold when she hung a withered wreath on your
bridal bed, the bed to which I owe my miserable being? Oh, no, my
father! sad was the hour of separation for my mother and yourself.
It may have dimmed the lustre of her eye, and shaded your locks with
premature grey; but whatever may have been its inscrutable cause,
there was one victim of that dark hour, less thought of than
yourselves, and yet a greater sufferer than both, the being in whose
heart you implanted affections, whose unfulfilled tenderness has made
that wretched thing they call your daughter.'

'Annabel!' exclaimed Herbert, rapidly advancing, with an imploring
gesture, and speaking in a tone of infinite anguish, 'Annabel,
Annabel, even now we can be happy!'

The countenance of his wife was troubled, but its stern expression had
disappeared. The long-concealed, yet at length irrepressible, emotion
of Venetia had touched her heart. In the conflict of affection between
the claims of her two parents, Lady Annabel had observed with a
sentiment of sweet emotion, in spite of all the fearfulness of the
meeting, that Venetia had not faltered in her devotion to her mother.
The mental torture of her child touched her to the quick. In the
excitement of her anguish, Venetia had expressed a profound sentiment,
the irresistible truth of which Lady Annabel could no longer
withstand. She had too long and too fo