‘Venetia, you know not what I had to endure!’ exclaimed Lady Annabel, in a tone of extreme bitterness.  ’There is no degree of wretchedness that you can conceive equal to what has been the life of your mother.  And what has sustained me; what, throughout all my tumultuous troubles, has been the star on which I have ever gazed?  My child!  And am I to lose her now, after all my sufferings, all my hopes that she at least might be spared my miserable doom?  Am I to witness her also a victim?’ Lady Annabel clasped her hands in passionate grief.

‘Mother! mother!’ exclaimed Venetia, in agony, ’spare yourself, spare me!’

’Venetia, you know how I have doted upon you; you know how I have watched and tended you from your infancy.  Have I had a thought, a wish, a hope, a plan? has there been the slightest action of my life, of which you have not been the object?  All mothers feel, but none ever felt like me; you were my solitary joy.’

Venetia leant her face upon the table at which she was sitting and sobbed aloud.

‘My love was baffled,’ Lady Annabel continued.  ’I fled, for both our sakes, from the world in which my family were honoured; I sacrificed without a sigh, in the very prime of my youth, every pursuit which interests woman; but I had my child, I had my child!’

‘And you have her still!’ exclaimed the miserable Venetia.  ’Mother, you have her still!’

‘I have schooled my mind,’ continued Lady Annabel, still pacing the room with agitated steps; ’I have disciplined my emotions; I have felt at my heart the constant the undying pang, and yet I have smiled, that you might be happy.  But I can struggle against my fate no longer.  No longer can I suffer my unparalleled, yes, my unjust doom.  What have I done to merit these afflictions?  Now, then, let me struggle no more; let me die!’

Venetia tried to rise; her limbs refused their office; she tottered; she fell again into her seat with an hysteric cry.

‘Alas! alas!’ exclaimed Lady Annabel, ’to a mother, a child is everything; but to a child, a parent is only a link in the chain of her existence.  It was weakness, it was folly, it was madness to stake everything on a resource which must fail me.  I feel it now, but I feel it too late.’

Venetia held forth her arms; she could not speak; she was stifled with her emotion.

‘But was it wonderful that I was so weak?’ continued her mother, as it were communing only with herself.  ’What child was like mine?  Oh! the joy, the bliss, the hours of rapture that I have passed, in gazing upon my treasure, and dreaming of all her beauty and her rare qualities!  I was so happy!  I was so proud!  Ah, Venetia! you know not how I have loved you!’

Venetia sprang from her seat; she rushed forward with convulsive energy; she clung to her mother, threw her arms round her neck, and buried her passionate woe in Lady Annabel’s bosom.

Lady Annabel stood for some minutes supporting her speechless and agitated child; then, as her sobs became fainter, and the tumult of her grief gradually died away, she bore her to the sofa, and seated herself by her side, holding Venetia’s hand in her own, and ever and anon soothing her with soft embraces, and still softer words.