not that any diminution of early affection breathed in them.  Mary ever wrote so as to satisfy the most exacting disposition; but it required all Mrs. Hamilton’s eloquence to persuade Emmeline she should rather rejoice than grieve that Mary had found some one to supply her place.  But vainly Emmeline tried in playfulness to infect her brother Herbert with a portion of her jealousy, for she knew not the contents of those letters Mary ever wrote to Herbert, or she would not for one moment have imagined that either Lord Delmont or St. Eval would usurp her brother’s place.

“Few things would give me greater pleasure,” one of Mary’s letters said, “than to see the union of Lord St. Eval and my fair friend.  It appears to me strange that each, with affections disengaged, can remain blind to the fascination of the other.  They are well suited in every respect, and I should fancy their union would certainly be a fair promise of happiness.  I live in hope, though as yet, I must confess, hope has but very little to feed on.”

St. Eval still lingered at Monte Rosa, and it was well for the inhabitants he did, for an event occurred which plunged that happy valley from joy and gaiety into wailing and affliction, and even for a brief interval infected the inhabitants of Oakwood with its gloom.  Death came, and tore away as his victim the widow’s son, the orphan’s brother.  The title of Delmont became extinct, for the last scion of that ancient race had gone to his last home.  He had gone with St. Eval and some other young men on a fishing expedition, at some distance; a sudden squall had arisen, and dispersing with much damage the little flotilla, compelled the crews of each to seek their own safety.  The sails of St. Eval’s boat were not furled quickly enough to escape the danger; it upset, and though, after much buffeting and struggling with the angry waters, St. Eval succeeded in bearing his insensible friend to land, his constitution had received too great a shock, and he lingered but a few brief weeks ere he was released from suffering.  He had been thrown with violence against a rock, producing a concussion of the brain, which, combined with the length of time he was under water, produced fever, and finally death.

On the agony of the bereaved mother and sister it would be useless to linger.  St. Eval forgot his individual sorrows, and devoted himself, heart and soul, in relieving those helpless sufferers, in which painful task he was ably seconded by Mary and her mother, whose letters to their friends at Oakwood, in that season of affliction, spoke of him in a manner that, unconsciously to themselves, confirmed every miserable suspicion in Caroline’s mind, and even excited some such feeling in her parents, whose disappointment was thus vividly recalled.  That he should ever seek their child again they deemed impossible, as did Caroline herself; but still it was in vain they endeavoured to look with any degree of pleasure to his union with another.