breast thrilled with hope, another with terror, and a third with the bitterest pangs of remorse for the anticipation of that morrow, all serenely, all indifferent alike to each

245

CHAPTER XIV.

STRANGE ACQUAINTANCES.

MRS. Cameron stood putting the finishing touch to her toilette, before the mirror in the apartment assigned her at her father's.

The room was not the same she had occupied before her marriage. Perhaps the circumstance had given her a little regret upon arriving, for Rosamond's was the sort of mind which finds a satisfaction in the merest trifles connected with old and happy associations. Not that her memories in the present instance were wholly of an agreeable character. The period of her London life immediately following the accession to the title, had been to her a painful one in many ways. There was her mother's opposition, steady, active, and de

clared; Darnley's altered demeanour, never the same, as to the sweet confidences they had formerly exchanged, since that terrible illness, and many minor annoyances; yet, with the bitterest of these recollections mingled so many cherished thoughts that now she was a happy wife and mother, she sometimes felt she could scarcely too fondly recall them. To this room she had flown, wearied with the false glitter of society, the hollow trickery of wordly protestation, the vain pursuit of pleasure—

"Life's blandest unkept promise," which every one around her seemed to be so madly urging. Here she had retired to draw refreshment and new life from the conscious rectitude of her own heart, and the outpourings of another, noble as itself. The maiden's chamber had been a temple of holy innocence no thought ever intruded to break its simplicity, or mar its pure repose. The draperies of transparent muslin, chosen by her own taste to veil the lofty windows and plain yet elegant furniture, were types of that young spotless nature, whose corporeal image they so fitly enshrined.

Now it was all altered. Her rooms had been the best upon the upper floors, and of course became the state sleeping apartments of the house when she resigned them. If Rosamond thought her mother careless of her natural attachment to her old quarters, she ceased to feel surprise on discovering the damask and gildings which had replaced her own simple appointments there. appointments there. It would have been a pleasant picture to add to her store of memories, herself, her husband, and "the baby," comfortably domesticated in the familiar retreat which had formed the theatre of many scenes of mental delight, but it was not to be.

To return. her toilette.

Rosamond was just completing Although a story higher than her former apartments, the dressing-room afforded ample accommodation, and was far better furnished than the one Mrs. Cameron occupied at her own home. It contained a mirror sufficiently large to reflect the whole figure, and there was a kind of relief in the smile she indulged in, after inspecting, with a critical eye, the details of her appearance which it faithfully presented.

"I do so hope Edward will be satisfied,” she said; "and really, with dear papa's gift of these splendid rubies, I think my dress looks in capital taste. Although," she added, with a sigh, "I must admit clothes would have been more useful to me than jewels."

Indeed, very considerable uneasiness had been experienced by the young wife, ever since Cameron's observation of the previous day, touching ladies' dress. Had he been aware how nearly he had divined the truth when speculating upon the cause of her refusal to join the dinner-party at Lady Bolsover's, he would never have made it. But at present the secret was safe enough. Cameron would not observe more, if she were dressed in a style doing no violence to his notions of propriety as to taste and colour. But that Rosamond could much longer conceal her motive for refusing to join parties like the present, she felt was utterly impossible.

This secret was not of a very romantic order. She had possessed a "trousseau suitable to her position when she married, but that was five years ago. During that