be worse than
the worst of her anticipations.

"Dreadful, indeed, my child! It is my duty to tell them to you;
but I must caution you, before I do so, to place a guard upon your
feelings. That which I have to say must necessarily alter all your
future prospects, and, unfortunately, make your marrying Herbert
Fitzgerald quite impossible."

"Mamma!" she exclaimed, with a loud voice, jumping from her chair.
"Not marry him! Why; what can he have done? Is it his wish to break
it off?"

Lady Desmond had calculated that she would best effect her object
by at once impressing her daughter with the idea that, under the
circumstances which were about to be narrated, this marriage would
not only be imprudent, but altogether impracticable and out of
the question. Clara must be made to understand at once, that the
circumstances gave her no option,--that the affair was of such a
nature as to make it a thing manifest to everybody, that she could
not now marry Herbert Fitzgerald. She must not be left to think
whether she could, or whether she could not, exercise her own
generosity. And therefore, not without discretion, the countess
announced at once to her the conclusion at which it would be
necessary to arrive. But Clara was not a girl to adopt such a
conclusion on any other judgment than her own, or to be led in such a
matter by the feelings of any other person.

"Sit down, my dear, and I will explain it all. But, dearest Clara,
grieved as I must be to grieve you, I am bound to tell you again
that it must be as I say. For both your sakes it must be so; but
especially, perhaps, for his. But when I have told you my story, you
will understand that this must be so."

"Tell me, then, mother." She said this, for Lady Desmond had again
paused.

"Won't you sit down, dearest?"

"Well, yes; it does not matter;" and Clara, at her mother's bidding,
sat down, and then the story was told to her.

It was a difficult tale for a mother to tell to so young a child--to
a child whom she had regarded as being so very young. There were
various little points of law which she thought that she was obliged
to explain; how it was necessary that the Castle Richmond property
should go to an heir-at-law, and how it was impossible that Herbert
should be that heir-at-law, seeing that he had not been born in
lawful wedlock. All these things Lady Desmond attempted to explain,
or was about to attempt such explanation, but desisted on finding
that her daug