spiritual earthquake. To nerve the mind firmly and resolutely, yet
humbly withal, and contritely, and with prayer against temptation,
prayer for support from on high--to resist the Evil One with the whole
force of the intellect, the whole truth of the heart, and to stop the
ears steadfastly against the voice of the charmer, charm he never so
wisely.

But so did not Agnes Fitz-Henry. It is true that on the preceding
night her better feelings had been touched, her heart had relented,
and she had banished, as she thought, the evil counsellors, ambition,
envy, jealousy, and distrust, from her spirit.

But with the night the better influence passed away, and ere the
morning had well come, the evil spirit had returned to his dwelling
place, and brought with him other spirits, worse and more wicked than
himself.

The festive scene of the previous evening had, for the first time
opened her eyes fairly to her own position; she read it in the
demeanor of all present; she heard it in the whispers which
unintentionally reached her ears; she felt it intuitively in the
shade--it was not a shade, yet she observed it--of difference
perceptible in the degree of deference and courtesy paid to herself
and to her sister.

She felt, for the first time, that Blanche was every thing, herself a
mere cipher--that Blanche was the lady of the manor, the cynosure of
all eyes, the queen of all hearts, herself but the lady's poor
relation, the dependent on her bounty, and at the best a creature to
be played with, and petted for her beauty and her wit, without regard
to her feelings, or sympathy for her heart.

And prepared as she was at all times to resist even just authority
with insolent rebellion; ready as she was always to assume the
defensive, and from that the offensive against all whom she fancied
offenders, how angrily did her heart now boil up, how almost fiercely
did she muster her faculties to resist, to attack, to conquer, to
annihilate all whom she deemed her enemies--and that, for the moment,
was the world.

Conscious of her own beauty, of her own wit, of her own high and
powerful intellect, perhaps over-confident in her resources, she
determined on that instant that she would devote them all, all to one
purpose, to which she would bend every energy, direct every thought of
her mind--to her own aggrandizement, by means of some great and
splendid marriage, which should set her as far above the heiress of
Ditton-in-the-Dale, a