Upon this Lord Cadurcis, if we must indeed use a title from which he himself shrank, carried a shrouded form in his arms into the hall, where the steward alone lingered, though withdrawn to the back part of the scene; and Lady Annabel, advancing to meet him, embraced his treasured burden, her own unhappy child.

‘Now, Venetia! dearest Venetia!’ she said, ’’tis past; we are at home.’

Venetia leant upon her mother, but made no reply.

‘Upstairs, dearest,’ said Lady Annabel:  ’a little exertion, a very little.’  Leaning on her mother and Lord Cadurcis, Venetia ascended the staircase, and they reached the terrace-room.  Venetia looked around her as she entered the chamber; that scene of her former life, endeared to her by so many happy hours, and so many sweet incidents; that chamber where she had first seen Plantagenet.  Lord Cadurcis supported her to a chair, and then, overwhelmed by irresistible emotion, she sank back in a swoon.

No one was allowed to enter the room but Pauncefort.  They revived her; Lord Cadurcis holding her hand, and touching, with a watchful finger, her pulse.  Venetia opened her eyes, and looked around her.  Her mind did not wander; she immediately recognised where she was, and recollected all that had happened.  She faintly smiled, and said, in a low voice ’You are all too kind, and I am very weak.  After our trials, what is this, George?’ she added, struggling to appear animated; ’you are at length at Cherbury.’

Once more at Cherbury!  It was, indeed, an event that recalled a thousand associations.  In the wild anguish of her first grief, when the dreadful intelligence was broken to her, if anyone had whispered to Venetia that she would yet find herself once more at Cherbury, she would have esteemed the intimation as mockery.  But time and hope will struggle with the most poignant affliction, and their influence is irresistible and inevitable.  From her darkened chamber in their Mediterranean villa, Venetia had again come forth, and crossed mountains, and traversed immense plains, and journeyed through many countries.  She could not die, as she had supposed at first that she must, and therefore she had exerted herself to quit, and to quit speedily, a scene so terrible as their late abode.  She was the very first to propose their return to England, and to that spot where she had passed her early life, and where she now wished to fulfil, in quiet and seclusion, the allotment of her remaining years; to meditate over the marvellous past, and cherish its sweet and bitter recollections.  The native firmness of Lady Annabel, her long exercised control over her emotions, the sadness and subdued tone which the early incidents of her career had cast over her character, her profound sympathy with her daughter, and that religious consolation which never deserted her, had alike impelled and enabled her to bear up against the catastrophe with more fortitude than her child.  The arrow, indeed, had struck