, and to proclaim that the
present more subdued and softened sorrow had only succeeded to a burst
far less quiet and uncontrolled. Woe to those who eat the bread of
dependence their tears are wrung from the inmost sources of the heart.

Isabel St. Leger was the only child of a captain in the army who died
in her infancy; her mother had survived him but a few months; and to the
reluctant care and cold affections of a distant and wealthy relation
of the same name the warm-hearted and penniless orphan was consigned.
Major-General Cornelius St. Leger, whose riches had been purchased in
India at the price of his constitution, was of a temper as hot as his
curries, and he wreaked it the more unsparingly on his ward, because the
superior ill-temper of his maiden sister had prevented his giving
vent to it upon her. That sister, Miss Diana St. Leger, was a meagre
gentlewoman of about six feet high, with a loud voice and commanding
aspect. Long in awe of her brother, she rejoiced at heart to find some
one whom she had such right and reason to make in awe of herself; and
from the age of four to that of seventeen Isabel suffered every insult
and every degradation which could be inflicted upon her by the tyranny
of her two protectors. Her spirit, however, was far from being broken
by the rude shocks it received; on the contrary, her mind, gentleness
itself to the kind, rose indignantly against the unjust. It was true
that the sense of wrong did not break forth audibly; for, though
susceptible, Isabel was meek, and her pride was concealed by the outward
softness and feminacy of her temper: but she stole away from those who
had wounded her heart or trampled upon its feelings, and nourished with
secret but passionate tears the memory of the harshness or injustice she
had endured. Yet she was not vindictive: her resentment was a noble
not a debasing feeling; once, when she was yet a child, Miss Diana was
attacked with a fever of the most malignant and infectious kind; her
brother loved himself far too well to risk his safety by attending her;
the servants were too happy to wreak their hatred under the pretence
of obeying their fears; they consequently followed the example of their
master; and Miss Diana St. Leger might have gone down to her ancestors
"unwept, unhonoured, and unsung," if Isabel had not volunteered and
enforced her attendance. Hour after hour her fairy form flitted around
the sick-chamber; or sat mute and breathless by the