His residence in foreign lands, the various names he assumed, baffled all her efforts at receiving the most distant intelligence concerning him, and Agnes still lingered in hopeless resignation--"The heart will break, but brokenly live on;" and thus it was she lived, existing for her child alone.

Nine years they had been parted, and Agnes had ever shrunk in evident pain from quitting her native land, and the cottage which had been the scene of her brief months of happiness; but when change of air was pleaded in behalf of her child, then suffering from lingering fever, when change of climate was strongly recommended by the physicians, in secret for herself equally with that of her little girl, she hesitated no longer, and a throb of mingled pain and pleasure swelled her too fond heart as her foot pressed the native land of her husband.

Some friends of her mother, unacquainted with her sad story, resided near Oxford, and thither they bent their steps, and finally fixed their residence, where Mrs.Amesfort soon had the happiness of beholding her child restored to perfect health and radiant in beauty; perhaps the faint hope that Alphingham might one day unconsciously behold his daughter, reconciled her to this residence in England.

She was in his own land; she might hear of him, of his happiness; and, deeply injured as she was, that knowledge, to her too warm, too devoted heart was all-sufficient.
Such were the particulars of the story which Percy concisely yet fully related in confidence to his sister.

Caroline neither moved nor spoke during his recital; her features still retained their deadly paleness, and her brother almost involuntarily felt alarmed.