natural instinct was a proof of greatness of
character, there was nothing of which Lady
Irwin stood in such dread as the compassion
of people of a tamer temperament. She, therefore,
learnt, not indeed to govern her feelings,
but to repress all outward manifestation of
them, and to hide the tumult of her bosom
under a cold and stately bearing. She became
silent and inclined to solitude, or to the
dangerous intimacy of Agnese, a waiting-
woman who had followed her from Italy,
and to whom more than to any other creature
she was in the habit of unveiling her
emotions.

It seems to be an imperative law of our
nature that the heart should unburthen itself
to some one. When he whom we trust is
indeed a friend, faithful in counsel and strong
in comfort, obedience to this law is the
sweetest solace of our earthly pilgrimage, but
when we hide the ugly portions of our
character from those who love us, and expose
them only to those of whose judgment we
stand in no awe, who, our inferiors in intellect
and station, pander to our passions and
foster our evil tendencies, there is no perverted
blessing which may be turned to more deadly
account.

Agnese Pistorella was the natural daughter
of a Venetian nobleman, who had been
assassinated by her mother in a fit of jealous
despair. Having accomplished her crime, the
murderess was overwhelmed with remorse,
and, far from attempting to make her escape,
herself sent to summon the officers of justice,
and lay with her loosened hair falling like a
pall over her victim till they arrived. Her youth,
her beauty, and the violence of her passions,
drew much attention to her case, but she was
executed—submitting to her fate with the
constancy of one who knew it to be the natural
consequence of her deed, the compensation
due to the Manes of her lover. The child she
left was completely abandoned by its father's
friends, and became dependent on its maternal
grandmother—a woman of infamous character.
Taking advantage of the interest excited by
her daughter, this woman made a loathsome
traffic by exhibiting her child ; but curiosity
soon died away—the sooner, as the grandmother
thought, that the girl inherited the
swarthy countenance and beetling brows of
her father. Nursed early and often with the
terrible story of her parents, and tutored to
assume a look of melancholy, Agnese gradually
acquired that low cunning with which
Nature arms the oppressed, passing from
infancy to womanhood subject to the caprices
of the abandoned old woman who, even in her
dotage meditated crime.

A deep-lying love for her mother was the
poetry of Agnese's life ; whatever was sweet
or soft in her memories gathered round the
image of the beautiful, sumptuously-apparelled
woman dwelling in luxurious chambers, who
had fondled and caressed her ; of those sunny,
far-off times she had a vague recollection, but
well did she remember the last time her
mother's arms were folded about her—well
did she remember the bare dungeon walls,
the darkness, the bloodshot eyes, the pale,
haggard cheeks, and the long, lingering kiss
of the white tremulous lips.

On her grandmother's death she was forced
to seek the means of living, and accident
placed her in the family of Mrs. Macdonald,
where she filled one of the lowest grades in
the household. Here her haughty silence,
while it made her unpopular among the
servants, but excited the interest of Helen,
who, in the loneliness of spirit engendered
by the absence of confidence between
herself and her mother, readily turned her
thoughts to the outcast, and made it her
earnest request that the girl might be
given to her as her special attendant—a
request which her mother, ever careless
of her true interests, and blameably lax
where her discipline should have been
the strictest, never thought of denying her.
The kindness thus unexpectedly shown to
her, Agnese repaid with blind devotion. To
Helen, in the dark twilight of a winter night,
she told the story of her parents, lingering
with fond minuteness over all the details with
which her memory was stored. It was a
story Helen well loved to hear ; she never
pointed out the heinous sin, and how the last
evil was the fruit of the first,—neither for herself
nor for the poor orphan did she read this
lesson.

Through Helen's courtship, Agnese had
watched, with jealous care, for the smallest
sign of faithlessness in Sir Edward, resolved,
if need were, to prove her devotion to her
mistress by sacrificing herself to avenge her;
but the need did not arise. He had loved
before—dearly loved, it was said ; but she
and Helen were both persuaded that true
passion was now, for the first time, awakened
in his bosom. When they were married,
and Sir Edward gradually relapsed into
his old habits, the ascendancy which his
wife exercised over him left no room for
jealousy, however much she might fret at the
evenness and placidity of his temper.

How mutually injurious these two women
were, may easily be conjectured. Neither
acted as corrective to the other ; but each
strengthened and confirmed the other's evil
tendencies.

CHAPTER IV.

LITTLE Frank Irwin would have been sadly
starved for affection and sympathy, if he had
been entirely dependent for both on his step-
mother ; for, though at times she oppressed
him with her caresses, and indulged him even
beyond what was wholesome for him, she
grew so capricious in her treatment of him,
after the death of her infant, that his naturally
sweet and trustful temper must have
been injured. But when they were in the
country, which was generally for nine months