fled my sobs in my handkerchief. When you were asleep I crept in
on tiptoe, and while Sister Angela held the lamp, I drew aside the
curtain and looked at you. How the sweet face of my baby stirred all
the tenderness that was left in my embittered nature! As you
slumbered, you threw your feet outside the cover, and murmured in
your musical childish babble something indistinct about 'mother, and
our Blessed Lady.'

"My heart yearned over you, but I could not bear the thought of
hearing your peculiarly plaintive wailing cry, which always pierced
my soul so painfully, and I softly kissed your feet and hurried away.
Come, put your arms around my neck, and kiss me, my lovely
fatherless child!"

For some seconds Mrs. Orme held her in a warm embrace. "There sit
down. Little remains to be told, but how bitter! Here in Paris, while
playing 'Amy Robsart,' I saw once more, after the lapse of thirteen
years, the man who had so contemptuously repudiated me. Regina, if
ever you are so unfortunate, so deluded, as to deeply and sincerely
love any man, and live to know that you are forgotten, that another
woman wears the name and receives the caresses that once made heaven
in your heart, then, and only then, can you realize what I suffered,
while looking at Cuthbert, with that other creature at his side,
acknowledged his wife! I thought I had petrified, had ceased to feel
aught but loathing and hate, but ah! the agony of that intolerable,
that maddening sight! Ask God for a shroud and coffin, rather than
endure what I suffered that night!"

She was too much engrossed by her mournful retrospective task, to
observe the deadly pallor that overspread Regina's face, as the girl
rested her head on the arm of the sofa and passed her fingers across
her eyes, striving to veil the image of one beyond the broad
Atlantic's sweep and roar.

"At last I began to taste the sweet poison of my revenge. Cuthbert
did not suspect my identity, but he was strangely fascinated by my
face and acting. Openly indifferent to the woman with whom his father
had linked him, and provided with no conscientious scruples, he
audaciously expressed his admiration, and contrived an interview to
commence his advances. He avowed sentiments disloyal to the heiress
who wore his name and jewels, and insulting to me had I been what he
supposed me, merely Odille Orme a pretty actress. I repulsed and
derided him, forbidding him my presence; and none can appreciate the
exquisit