been up late the
previous night, was awoke by her cousin's maid. On entering Helen's
dressing-room she found her already dressed, but so pale and
distressed in her appearance, that she could hardly recognise the
brilliant lawgiver of the evening's festivities in the pale, languid,
feverish beauty that was seated at her desk.

"Dear Helen, you are weary; ill, perhaps," exclaimed her gentle
cousin. "You have entered too soon into gay society, and you suffer
for the public restraint in private."

Her cousin looked steadily in her face, and then smiled one of those
bitter disdainful smiles which it is always painful to see upon a
woman's lip.

"Sit down, Rose," she said; "sit down, and copy this letter. I
have been writing all night, and yet cannot get a sufficient number
finished in time, without your assistance."

Rose did as she was desired, and, to her astonishment, found that
the letters were to the inhabitants of a borough, which Mr. Ivers
had expressed his desire to represent. Rose wrote and wrote; but the
longest task must have a termination. About one, the gentleman himself
came into the room, and, as Rose thought, somewhat indifferently,
expressed his surprise, that what he came to commence, was already
finished. Still he chid his fair wife for an exertion which he feared
might injure her health, and evinced the strongest desire to succeed
in rescuing the people of L---- from the power of a party to which he
was opposed; hinting, at the same time, that the contest would drain
his purse and many of his resources.

"And let it," exclaimed Helen, when he left the room, "let it. I
care not for _that_, but I will overturn every thing that interposes
between me and the desire I have to humble the wife of the present
representative. Look, I would hold this hand in the fire, ay, and
suffer it to smoulder into ashes, to punish the woman who called me
a proud _parvenue_! She did so before I had been a week in London.
Her cold calm face has been a curse to me ever since. She has stood,
the destroying angel, at the gate of my paradise, poisoning every
enjoyment. Let me but humble _her_," she continued, rising proudly
from the sofa upon which she had been resting; "let me but humble
_her_, and I shall feel a triumphant woman! For that I have watched
and waited; _anxiety for that caused me the loss of my child_; but if
Ivers succeeds, I shall be repaid."

Rose shuddered. Was it really true, that having achieved the wea