“I have been wanting so much to see you, my dear child,” she said, affectionately, “and have been looking for you all the morning, and finding you did not make your appearance, concluded to come in search of you.  But what is the matter,” said she, pausing, and glancing first at Ella, and then at her brother, “I trust you have not heard any bad news?”

“We have, indeed, dear Madam,” replied Arthur, with an effort to control his voice, “the loss of a very dear friend,”—­here the tones visibly faltered,—­“by the burning of a vessel at sea, and the subsequent upsetting of a boat, in which some of the passengers were endeavoring to make their escape.”

“That is indeed very, very sad news,” said the old lady, affectionately clasping Ella’s hand, “and I, my friends, can sympathize with you, for five years ago to-day, my son, my darling son, the pride of my heart, the charm and ornament of our dwelling, set sail from his native shores, for a distant land, and from that moment unto this, no tidings ever reached me of his fate, for the vessel was heard of never after.”

“Do you know,” she said to Ella, a few moments after, as Arthur, with some murmured apology left the room, for he felt that human sympathy, however precious at other times, seemed but to madden him now, and he longed to be alone—­“Do you know,” she repeated, as the young girl’s eyes, swollen with weeping, were upraised to her benevolent countenance, “that I was standing at the window right opposite, when you drove up to the door, and as your brother quickly alighted from the carriage, and tenderly assisted you out, my heart beat quick; the blood forsook my cheeks, and my whole frame was convulsed with emotion, for so strikingly did he resemble my lost one in look and manner, that, for the moment, I wildly dreamed that he had come back to bless me.”

The old lady’s tears flowed freely.

“I miss him so much, so very much,” she said, “and especially on the anniversary of that fatal day which tore him from my fond embrace, and I can well appreciate the emotion which lent intensity to David’s pathetic exclamation, ’Oh my son, my son, would to heaven I had died for thee, oh, my son, my son.’”

While Mrs. Cartwright was thus, by a relation of her own trials, endeavoring to divert, in some measure, Ella’s mind, and prevent her from dwelling too exclusively on this painful event, Arthur, having gained his chamber, was now pacing the floor with restless steps, his whole soul a prey to the most intense emotions of grief, such as he had never before experienced.  At one moment he felt stupefied, at the suddenness of the blow; the next, aroused again to the consciousness of its terrible reality.  At length a hope, that seemed to up-spring from the depth of his despair, shed a faint light over the chaotic darkness that reigned within.  “The information may be exaggerated,” was his mental solving, “for it is plain that the writer, in penning it, was actuated