hitherto all her own, and were the sole base

of her happiness.

She had half resolved to set forth in pursuit of him, when the recollection of her ignorance of both the person and abode of her rival arrested her. Her rival! what bitterness was in the thought of this hateful person! and the gentle, the hitherto reasonable Alicia, who, a few hours before, had never experienced an angry passion, now felt her very temples bursting, and her respiration impeded almost to suffocation, by jealous rage and disappointed

affection.

At this moment, her femme de charge entered, as was her usual custom, to present the ménu for dinner, and receive her mistress' orders; when the agitated Madame St. Armand was obliged to quell her emotions, and assume an air of unconcern.

"I have prepared the soup, and the pou

larde au jus, for monsieur, as madame commanded yesterday," said the housekeeper; "and I think it will please him.”

These few words brought a train of reflections, now fraught with bitterness, to the mind of Alicia. It was only the previous morning, that, anxious to please her husband, she had ordered his favourite plat for the dinner of the following day. How happy did she feel in expressing this desire! and now, though but so few hours had elapsed, what a dreadful change had occurred in her position and sentiments, and what intensity of wretchedness had she not endured in that brief interval!

She could scarcely assume sufficient composure to tell the femme de charge that M. St. Armand would not dine at home; and that, as she herself was rather unwell, she should only require a little bouillon. The expression of surprise in the v oman's face awakened her

mistress to a sense of her indiscretion in avowing her indisposition at the same moment that she announced her husband's absence; and she felt embarrassed as she remarked the curiosity which she appeared to have excited.

Who has not experienced the misery of being compelled to assume an air of unconcern in the presence of importunate visitors or servants, when some painful contretems, which we are necessitated to conceal, has occurred? In spite of, to adopt the expression of one of your poets, our matchless intrepidity of face," even you and I, ma chère Caroline, have, ere now, endured this vexatious species of trial with something very like discomposure, if not confusion.

Fancy, then, how such a sentimental creature as my heroine must have suffered under those circumstances; she who had never hitherto been compelled to conceal her slight

est emotion. Yet now, while undergoing the fiercest pangs of jealousy, which shook her frame and agonised her heart, she had the additional mortification of feeling that she and her husband would become the subject of the impertinent curiosity and remarks of their own menials; a bitter and humiliating thought, before which her pride and delicacy shrank in sensitive alarm.

Do not accuse me of sentimentality, if I observe that it is almost incredible how painfully minor ills can make themselves felt, even in the very moment when we are enduring great and overwhelming afflictions. The power of weeping in entire secrecy, all access debarred to prying curiosity, or coarse sympathy which but aggravates the sorrow it would sooth, is in itself a source of alleviation; but the necessity of wearing the semblance of tranquillity when the heart is breaking, to elude

the vigilant eye of plebeian inquisitiveness, is

alone a heavy suffering.

Remember this remark is made in my métier of author; and you must not consider it as at all a representation of my own sentiments.

Every thing in the room when Alicia was seated reminded her of Jules. All that it contained were his gifts, and endeared to her by a thousand fond recollections. The book he had been reading to her the day before, while she sat at her embroidery, was still on the table, with a mark upon it, to indicate the place where he had terminated; and the bouquet he had brought to her, was still fresh in the vase where he had placed it. As her eye rested on each object indicative of his tenderness, she asked herself, whether it was possible that he could always have been deceiving her; and that, while he seemed to be only occupied in lavishing tokens