poignant agony with the sudden consciousness that you
are hated where once you were loved; that where once you had turned for
consolation or sympathy you have now nothing to expect but coldness
and distrust; that the treasure of affection on which you have counted
against the day of adversity had proved bankrupt, and nothing remained
of all its bright hopes and promises but bitter regrets and sorrowful
repinings.

It was in the very last depth of this spirit I now locked myself in my
room to determine what I should do, by what course I should shape my
future. I saw the stake for which Madame Cleremont was playing. She had
resolved that my mother's marriage should be broken, and she herself
declared Lady Norcott. That my father might be brought to accede to such
a plan was by no means improbable. Its extravagance and its enormity
would have been great inducements, had he no other interest in the
matter.

I began to canvass with myself how persons poor and friendless could
possibly meet the legal battle which this question should originate, and
how my mother, in her destitution and poverty, could contend against the
force of the wealth that would be opposed to her. It had only been by
the united efforts of her relatives and friends, all eager to support
her in such a cause, that she had been enabled to face the expenses of
the suit my father had brought on the question of my guardianship. How
could she again sustain a like charge? Was it likely that her present
condition would enable her to fee leaders on circuit and bar magnates,
to pay the costs of witnesses, and all the endless outgoings of the law?

So long as I lived, I well knew my poor mother would compromise none of
the rights that pertained to me; but if I could be got rid of,--and the
event of the morning shot through my mind,--some arrangement with her
might not be impossible,--at least, it was open to them to think so; and
I could well imagine that they would build on such a foundation. It was
not easy to imagine a woman like \ Madame Cleremont, a person of the
most attractive manners, beautiful, gifted, and graceful, capable of a
great crime; but she herself had shown me more than once in fiction the
portraiture of an individual who, while shrinking with horror from the
coarse contact of guilt, would willingly set the springs in motion which
ultimately conduce to the most appalling disasters. I remember even her
saying to me one day, "It is in watching the