never to forgive; and she steadily returned, unopened, the frequent letters addressed to her by her sister, who pined in her distant Indian home for a renewal of the old sisterly love which had watched over and gladdened her life from infancy to womanhood.  A long silence—­a silence of many years—­succeeded; broken at last by the sad announcement that the unforgiven one had long since found an early grave in a foreign land.  The letter which brought the intelligence bore the London post-mark, and was written by Captain Everett; to whom, it was stated, Mrs. Eleanor Fitzhugh’s sister, early widowed, had been united in second nuptials, and by whom she had borne a son, Frederick Everett, now nearly twenty years of age.  The long-pent-up affection of Mrs. Fitzhugh for her once idolized sister burst forth at this announcement of her death with uncontrollable violence; and, as some atonement for her past sinful obduracy, she immediately invited the husband and son of her long-lost Mary to Woodlands Manor-House, to be henceforth, she said, she hoped their home.  Soon after their arrival, Mrs. Fitzhugh made a will—­the family property was entirely at her disposal—­revoking a former one, which bequeathed the whole of the real and personal property to a distant relative whom she had never seen, and by which all was devised to her nephew, who was immediately proclaimed sole heir to the Fitzhugh estates, yielding a yearly rental of at least L12,000.  Nay, so thoroughly was she softened towards the memory of her deceased sister, that the will—­of which, as I have stated, no secret was made—­provided, in the event of Frederick dying childless, that the property should pass to his father, Mary Fitzhugh’s second husband.

No two persons could be more unlike than were the father and son—­mentally, morally, physically.  Frederick Everett was a fair-haired, blue-eyed young man, of amiable, caressing manners, gentle disposition, and ardent, poetic temperament.  His father, on the contrary, was a dark-featured, cold, haughty, repulsive man, ever apparently wrapped up in selfish and moody reveries.  Between him and his son there appeared to exist but little of cordial intercourse, although the highly-sensitive and religious tone of mind of Frederick Everett caused him to treat his parent with unvarying deference and respect.

The poetic temperament of Frederick Everett brought him at last, as poetic temperaments are apt to do, into trouble.  Youth, beauty, innocence, and grace, united in the person of Lucy Carrington—­the only child of Mr. Stephen Carrington, a respectable retired merchant of moderate means, residing within a few miles of Woodlands Manor-House—­crossed his path; and spite of his shield of many quarterings, he was vanquished in an instant, and almost without resistance.  The at least tacit consent and approval of Mr. Carrington and his fair daughter secured, Mr. Everett, junior—­hasty, headstrong lover that he was—­immediately disclosed his matrimonial