“Emmeline,” Mrs. Hamilton said, gently and falteringly, but her child heard her not, and she twined her arm around her, and tried to draw her towards her.

“My own darling Emmeline, speak to me; I cannot bear to see you thus.  Look up, love; for my sake calm this excited feeling.”

“May I not even weep?  Would you deny me that poor comfort?” burst almost passionately from the lips of Emmeline, for every faculty was bewildered in that suddenly-excited woe.  She looked up; her eyes were bloodshot and haggard, her cheek flushed, and the veins drawn like cords across her brow.

“Weep:  would your mother forbid you that blessed comfort and relief, my Emmeline?  Could you indeed accuse me of such cruelty?” replied Mrs. Hamilton, bending over her as she spoke, and removing from those flushed temples the hair which hung heavy with moisture upon them, and as she did so Emmeline felt the tears of her mother fall thick and fast on her own scorching brow.  She started from her knees, gazed wildly and doubtingly upon her, and tottering from exhaustion, would have fallen, had not Mrs. Hamilton, with a sudden movement, received her in her arms.  For a moment Emmeline struggled as if to break from her embrace, but then, with a sudden transition of feeling, clasped her arms convulsively about her mother’s neck, and burst into a long and violent but relieving flood of tears.

“I meant never, never to have revealed my secret,” she exclaimed, in a voice almost inaudible, as her mother, seating her on a couch near them, pressed her to her heart, and permitted some minutes to pass away in that silence of sympathy which to the afflicted is so dear.  “And now that it has been wrung from me, I know not what I do or say.  Oh, if I have spoken aught disrespectfully to you or papa just now, I meant it not, indeed I did not; but they dared to speak false tales, and I could not sit calmly to hear them,” she added, shuddering.

“There was nothing in your words, my own love, to give us pain with regard to ourselves,” said Mrs. Hamilton, in her most soothing tone, as again and again she pressed her quivering lips to that flushed cheek, and tried to kiss away the now streaming tears.  “Do not let that thought add to your uneasiness, my own darling.”

“And can you forgive me, mother?” and Emmeline buried her face yet more closely in her mother’s bosom.

“Forgive you, Emmeline! is there indeed aught in your acquaintance with Arthur Myrvin which demands my forgiveness?” replied her mother, in a tone of anxiety and almost alarm.

“Oh, no, no! but you may believe I have encouraged these weak emotions; that I have wilfully thought on them till I have made myself thus miserable; that I have called for his love—­given him encouragement:  indeed, indeed I have not.  I have struggled hard to obtain forgetfulness—­to think of him no more, to regain happiness, but it would not come.  I feel—­I know I can never, never be again the joyous light-hearted girl that I was once; all feels so changed.”