“It is past counsel, Hannah.”

“What is it then?”

“I cannot tell you except this! that the fatality of which I speak is the only reason why I do not overstep the boundary of conventional rank and marry Nora!  Why I do not marry anybody!  Hush! here we are at the house.”

Very stately and beautiful looked the mansion with its walls of white free-stone and its porticos of white marble, gleaming through its groves upon the top of the hill.

When they reached it Hannah turned to go around to the servants’ door, but Mr. Brudenell called to her, saying: 

“This way! this way, Hannah!” and conducted her up the marble steps to the visitors’ entrance.

He preceded her into the drawing-room, a spacious apartment now in its simple summer dress of straw matting, linen covers, and lace curtains.

Mrs. Brudenell and the two young ladies, all in white muslin morning dresses, were gathered around a marble table in the recess of the back bay window, looking over newspapers.

On seeing the visitor who accompanied her son, Mrs. Brudenell arose with a look of haughty surprise.

“You wished to see Hannah Worth, I believe, mother, and here she is,” said Herman.

“My housekeeper did.  Touch the bell, if you please, Herman.”

Mr. Brudenell did as requested, and the summons was answered by Jovial.

“Take this woman to Mrs. Spicer, and say that she has come about the weaving.  When she leaves show her where the servants’ door is, so that she may know where to find it when she comes again,” said Mrs. Brudenell haughtily.  As soon as Hannah had left the room Herman said: 

“Mother, you need not have hurt that poor girl’s feelings by speaking so before her.”

“She need not have exposed herself to rebuke by entering where she did.”

“Mother, she entered with me.  I brought her in.”

“Then you were very wrong.  These people, like all of their class, require to be kept down—­repressed.”

“Mother, this is a republic!”

“Yes; and it is ten times more necessary to keep the lower orders down, in a republic like this, where they are always trying to rise, than it is in a monarchy, where they always keep their place,” said the lady arrogantly.

“What have you there?” inquired Herman, with a view of changing the disagreeable subject.

“The English papers.  The foreign mail is in.  And, by the way, here is a letter for you.”

Herman received the letter from her hand, changed color as he looked at the writing on the envelope, and walked away to the front window to read it alone.

His mother’s watchful eyes followed him.

As he read, his face flushed and paled; his eyes flashed and smoldered; sighs and moans escaped his lips.  At length, softly crumpling up the letter, he thrust it into his pocket, and was stealing from the room to conceal his agitation, when his mother, who had seen it all, spoke: