r, and she wrote on rapidly.

So silent was the chamber, so hushed was all within it, that the
scratching noise of the pen alone broke the stillness. Speedily glided
her hand across the paper, on which two heavy tears had already fallen,
burning drops of sorrow that gushed from a fevered brain! A whole world
of disaster, a terrible catalogue of ill, revealed itself before her;
but she wrote on. She felt that she was to put in motion the series of
events whose onward course she never could control, as though she was
to push over a precipice the rock that in its downward rush would carry
ruin and desolation along with it; but she wrote on.

At last she ceased, and all was still; not a sound was heard in the
little room, and Nelly leaned her head down upon the table and wept.

But while she wept she prayed, prayed that if the season of trouble
her thoughts foreshadowed should be inevitable, and that if the cup of
sorrow must, indeed, be drained, the strength might be sent them for
the effort. It might have been that her mind exaggerated the perils of
separation, and the dangers that would beset one of Kate's temper and
disposition. Her own bereavement might have impressed her with the
misery that follows an unhappy attachment; and her reflective nature,
shadowed by an early sorrow, might have colored too darkly a future of
such uncertainty. But a deep foreboding, like a heavy weight, lay upon
her heart, and she was powerless to resist it.

These instincts of our nature are not to be undervalued, nor confounded
with the weak and groundless terrors of the frivolous. The closing
petals of the flower as the storm draws nigh, the wild cry of the
sea-bird as the squall is gathering, the nestling of the sheep within
the fold while yet the hurricane has not broke, are signs that, to the
observant instincts, peril comes not unannounced.

"Shall I read it, papa?" said she, as she raised her head, and turned
towards him a look of calm and beaming affection.

"You need n't," said he, roughly. "Of course, it 's full of all the
elegant phrases women like to cheat each other with. You said she will
go; that's enough."

Nelly tried to speak, but the words would not come, and she merely
nodded an acquiescence.

"And, of course, too, you told her Ladyship that if it wasn't to a near
relation of the family one that had a kind of right, as I may say, to
ask her that I 'd never have given my consent. Neither would I!"

"I said that y