how different was her lot to that of her companion! She was the
confidante of all his domestic sorrows, and often he had requested
her to exert her influence to obtain some pacifying missive from Lady
Annabel, which might secure him a quiet evening at Cadurcis; and
whenever this had not been obtained, the last words of Venetia were
ever not to loiter, and to remember to speak to his mother as much as
he possibly could. Venetia returned to a happy home, welcomed by the
smile of a soft and beautiful parent, and with words of affection
sweeter than music. She found an engaging companion, who had no
thought but for her welfare, her amusement, and her instruction: and
often, when the curtains were drawn, the candles lit, and Venetia,
holding her mother's hand, opened her book, she thought of poor
Plantagenet, so differently situated, with no one to be kind to him,
with no one to sympathise with his thoughts, and perhaps at the very
moment goaded into some unhappy quarrel with his mother.




CHAPTER IX.


The appearance of the Cadurcis family on the limited stage of her
life, and the engrossing society of her companion, had entirely
distracted the thoughts of Venetia from a subject to which in old days
they were constantly recurring, and that was her father. By a process
which had often perplexed her, and which she could never succeed in
analysing, there had arisen in her mind, without any ostensible
agency on the part of her mother which she could distinctly recall, a
conviction that this was a topic on which she was never to speak. This