Rose did as she was desired, and, to her astonishment, found that the letters were to the inhabitants of a borough, which Mr. Ivers had expressed his desire to represent.  Rose wrote and wrote; but the longest task must have a termination.  About one, the gentleman himself came into the room, and, as Rose thought, somewhat indifferently, expressed his surprise, that what he came to commence, was already finished.  Still he chid his fair wife for an exertion which he feared might injure her health, and evinced the strongest desire to succeed in rescuing the people of L——­ from the power of a party to which he was opposed; hinting, at the same time, that the contest would drain his purse and many of his resources.

“And let it,” exclaimed Helen, when he left the room, “let it.  I care not for that, but I will overturn every thing that interposes between me and the desire I have to humble the wife of the present representative.  Look, I would hold this hand in the fire, ay, and suffer it to smoulder into ashes, to punish the woman who called me a proud parvenue!  She did so before I had been a week in London.  Her cold calm face has been a curse to me ever since.  She has stood, the destroying angel, at the gate of my paradise, poisoning every enjoyment.  Let me but humble her,” she continued, rising proudly from the sofa upon which she had been resting; “let me but humble her, and I shall feel a triumphant woman!  For that I have watched and waited; anxiety for that caused me the loss of my child; but if Ivers succeeds, I shall be repaid.”

Rose shuddered.  Was it really true, that having achieved the wealth, the distinction she panted for, she was still anxious to mount higher?  Was it possible that wealth, station, general admiration, and the devoted affection of a tender husband did not satisfy the humbly-born beauty of an obscure English village?  Again Helen spoke; she told how she had at last succeeded in rousing her husband to exertion—­how, with an art worthy a better cause, she had persuaded him that his country demanded his assistance—­how he had been led almost to believe that the safety of England was in the hands of the freeholders of L——­; and then she pictured her own triumph, as the wife of the successful candidate, over the woman who had called her a parvenue.  “And, after all,” murmured poor Rose, “and after all, dear Helen, you are really unhappy.”

“Miserable!” was the reply—­“no creature was ever so perfectly miserable as I am!  The one drop of poison has poisoned the whole cup.  What to me was all this grandeur, when I felt that that woman looked down upon me, and induced others to do the same; that though I was with them, I was not of them; and all through her means.  Ivers could not understand my feeling; and, besides, I dare not let him know what had been said by one of his own clique, lest he should become inoculated by the same feeling.”