While she spoke, Regina’s eyes wandered across the mass of heads, and rested on the commanding form of her guardian, standing among a group of gentlemen collected around Mrs. Carew, who clad in white moire antique, with a complete overdress of finest black lace, looped with diamond sprays, seemed more than usually regal and brilliant.

Mrs. Palma hurried Regina through a side entrance, and down to the carriage, and ere long, having seen her enter the hall at home, bade her good-night, and drove back for Mrs. Carew and Mr. Palma.

It was only a little after ten o’clock, and Regina went up to the library, her favourite haunt.  She had converted the over-skirt of her dress into an apron, now filled with bouquets from among the number showered upon her; and selecting one composed of pelargoniums and heliotropes, she placed it in the vase beneath her mother’s picture, and laid the remainder in a circle around it.

“Ah, mother! they praised your child; but your voice was missing.  Would you too have been proud of me?  Oh! if I could feel your lips on mine, and hear you whisper once more, as of old, ’My baby! my precious baby!’”

Gazing at the portrait, she spoke with a passionate fervour very unusual in her composed reserved nature, and unshed tears gathered and glorified her eyes.

The house was silent and deserted, save by the servants, by Mrs. Carew’s child and nurse, and throwing off her cloak, Regina remained standing in front of the portrait, while her thoughts wandered into grey dreary wastes.

Since the day of Mrs. Carew’s arrival she had not exchanged a syllable with her guardian, nor had she for an instant seen him alone, for the early breakfasts had been discontinued, and in honour of his guest and client, Mr. Palma took his with the assembled family.

There was in his deportment toward his ward nothing harsh, nothing that could have indicated displeasure; but he seemed to have entirely forgotten her from the moment when he presented her to Mr. Chesley.

He never even accidentally glanced at her, and patiently watching her immobile cold face, sparkling only with intelligence, as he endeavoured to entertain his exacting and imperious guest, Regina began to realize the vast distance that divided her from him.

His haughty Brahmimc pride seemed to lift him into some lofty plane, so far beyond the level of Peleg Peterson, that in contrasting them the girl groaned and grew sick at heart.  She felt that she stood upon a mine already charged, and that at any moment that wretched man who held the fatal fuse in his brutal hand, might hurl her and all her hopes into irremediable chaos and ruin.  If the fastidious and aristocratic people who had kindly applauded her singing a little while ago could have imagined the dense cloud of social humiliation that threatened to burst upon her, would she have even been tolerated in that assemblage?  Ignorance of her parentage was her sole passport into really good society, and the prestige of her guardian’s noble name an ermine mantle of protection, which might be rudely torn away.