ay of loveliness he was guarded
by the memory of her who had stamped the impress of herself on his whole
altered being? If the gratification of the man's sterner ambition could
have atoned for the disappointment of the youth's dream of love, the
shadow of that memory would have passed from his life. Step by step he
had risen in the opinions of men, and at length one of the most profound
lawyers of the day sought his association with himself in a case of the
most intense interest, involving the honor of a lovely and much-wronged
woman. His reputation out of the halls of justice had already become
such that many thronged the court to hear him. Gallant gentlemen and
fair ladies looked down on him from the galleries--but far apart from
these, in a distant corner, sat one whose tall form was enveloped in a
cloak, and whose face was closely veiled. Beneath that cloak throbbed a
mother's heart, and through that veil a mother's eyes sought the face
she loved best on earth. He knew not she was there, for she rarely now
asked a question respecting his engagements, or expressed any interest
in his movements, yet how her ears drank in the music of his voice, and
her eyes flashed back the proud light that shone in his! As she listened
to his delineation of woman's claims to the sympathy and the defence of
every generous heart, as she heard his biting sarcasm on the cowardly
nature that, having wronged, would now crush into deeper ruin his fair
client, as she saw kindling eyes fixed upon him, and caught, when he
paused for a moment exhausted by the rush of indignant feeling, the low
murmur of admiring crowds, how she longed to cry aloud, "My son--my
son!" He speaks again. Higher and higher rises his lofty strain, bearing
along with it the passions of the multitude. He ceases--and, as though
touched by an electric shock, hundreds spring at once to their feet. The
emphatic "Silence!" of the venerable judge hushes the shout upon their
lips, but the mother has seen that movement, and, bursting into tears of
proud triumphant joy, she finds her way below, and is in the street
before the verdict which his eloquence had won was pronounced.

Edward Houstoun had fitted up a room in his mother's house as a study,
and over his accustomed seat hung his father's portrait. To that room he
went on his return from the scene we have described. Beneath the
portrait stood one who seldom entered there. She turned at the opening
of the door--the lip, usual