e window, and, gliding to the bed, threw her arms round
her sister's neck, and kissed away her tears with a caressing fondness,
that, if Ellinor resisted for one moment, she returned with equal
tenderness the next.

"Indeed, dearest," said Madeline, gently, "I cannot guess how I hurt
you, and still less, how Eugene has offended you?"

"He has offended me in nothing," replied Ellinor, still weeping, "if
he has not stolen away all your affection from me. But I was a foolish
girl, forgive me, as you always do; and at this time I need your
kindness, for I am very--very unhappy."

"Unhappy, dearest Nell, and why?"

Ellinor wept on without answering.

Madeline persisted in pressing for a reply; and at length her sister
sobbed out:

"I know that--that--Walter only has eyes for you, and a heart for you,
who neglect, who despise his love; and I--I--but no matter, he is going
to leave us, and of me--poor me, he will think no more!"

Ellinor's attachment to their cousin, Madeline had long half suspected,
and she had often rallied her sister upon it; indeed it might have been
this suspicion which made her at the first steel her breast against
Walter's evident preference to herself. But Ellinor had never till now
seriously confessed how much her heart was affected; and Madeline, in
the natural engrossment of her own ardent and devoted love, had not
of late spared much observation to the tokens of her sister's. She was
therefore dismayed, if not surprised, as she now perceived the cause of
the peevishness Ellinor had just manifested, and by the nature of the
love she felt herself, she judged, and perhaps somewhat overrated, the
anguish that Ellinor endured.

She strove to comfort her by all the arguments which the fertile
ingenuity of kindness could invent; she prophesied Walter's speedy
return, with his boyish disappointment forgotten, and with eyes no
longer blinded to the attractions of one sister, by a bootless fancy
for another. And though Ellinor interrupted her from time to time with
assertions, now of Walter's eternal constancy to his present idol; now,
with yet more vehement declarations of the certainty of his finding new
objects for his affections in new scenes; she yet admitted, by little
and little, the persuasive power of Madeline to creep into her heart,
and brighten away its griefs with hope, till at last, with the tears yet
wet on her cheek, she fell asleep in her sister's arms.

And Madeline, though she w