Beauchamp girls' in stature, form, and face. They had inherited all their mother's jealousies, and with interest; cousins seldom escape that wretched heritage of rivalship and envy; and one of the strongest inducements to Miss Beauchamp to become the Countess of Tunbridge, to wed her eighteen summers and her budding beauty to seventy winters and a decrepitude which had nothing endearing, but all that was disgusting, was the thought, early suggested by her mother, of "the envy of Aunt Orde, and the spite of both her cousins."

This wretched feeling was stronger in the young girl's heart, fostered, guiltily fostered, as it had been from the very cradle, than even woman's natural love of precedence, or her delight in the pomps and vanities she swears so solemnly to abjure.

From a marriage contracted through such motives what can we expect? "Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles ?" Were not misery and disgrace ever the pale and

haggard offspring of Malice, of Envy, and of Revenge?

With

Alas! alas! what a fatal, what an awful power do we exert over each other! what careless hands we hold, and twist, and knot, and tangle the threads of an immortal destiny-how cruelly we polish, and we point words that may prove deadly weapons! The coaxing tone of ill-concealed triumph in which Lady Beauchamp conveyed the news of her daughters' approaching weddings, the almost tender disparagement of her tone, and, in speaking of her nieces, the spiteful play of her sarcasm, changed the whole tenor of Mrs. Orde's feelings, views, and wishes; and as she read raised a barrier between her daughters and Gerard Esdaile, which entailed much of misery on him, and were the remote cause of whatever of evil may befal either Rosalie or Jeannetta, in the perilous voyage of life on which their mother hastens to launch them.

It might interest a reader who loves to trace

effects to their causes, to cast his eyes over the contents of the glazed, scented, delicately penned, crossed and re-crossed epistle, which awoke so many slumbering fiends in the gentle bosom of Mrs. Orde.

This poisonous communication ran as follows; but was so carefully concocted, and so important in its results, as to deserve to begin a new, instead of ending an old, chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

TWO EDGED SWORDS.

"MY DEAREST SISTER,

66

Although the chances of life

have kept us so much asunder, my heart has never been really severed from the friend of the Auld lang syne,' the widow of my

beloved and lamented brother! the mother of his children In joy or in sorrow, my Rosalie! the first impulse of your poor Barbara is to

seek sympathy, congratulation, or counsel in your friendly bosom, and if I seldom yield to the sweet temptation, it is because our lots are cast in such different spheres. The world of fashion is governed by laws so different from those of your secluded and rustic village, that it would be as absurd in reality for me to ask your advice in taste, or etiquette,

matters of ambition,

as for you to con

sult me about the management of your Sunday school, the shape of the flannel waistcoats, you give your old men, or the gruel, blankets and red cloaks, you send to your old women at Christmas. To. this conviction, therefore, you must attribute, my not having given you any account of the progress of events, during the first season in town of my darling girls-events which for some weeks have cast their shadows or rather their sunshine beforeAlas! alas! my Rosalie, what an inscrutable thing is a mother's heart. We train our darlings to shine in the eyes of men, we watch their