We were married! Oh words of sacred import, too frequently uttered without the slightest thought of their meaning, but associated with a world of joy or sorrow; great happiness, gone by perhaps, and oftener with bitter irremediable disappointment!

presence of my angry wife, and hastened out | her son, entreated me to "be kind to poor of the house through the open windows to Florence Daveney," and we were married. the lawn. A shower was falling, thunder pealed upon the air, and summer lightning illuminated the village. Pausing a moment, as I heard my children laughing in their nursery, I collected my senses sufficiently to return for my hat, and then set off towards the coach road leading to London. At the end of the lane I met the stage, as I had anticipated; it stopped, and I entered it mechanically, and throwing myself into a corner, mused moodily on the events of the last six years, which were these:

We resolved on a foreign tour. How could Florence trust me so far from the parent who had always been her refuge and protection! and we departed, each resolved, I am sure, on making the other happy. For a time we took up our abode at Frankfort; there we met many English acquaintances, and for some weeks we were happy. My fiery and jealous spirit seemed subdued beneath the gentle influence of my wife, but it only wanted occasion to burst forth, and this a fractious temper like mine was not long in seeking. Evil passions love to feed themselves. A young relation of mine came to Frankfort for the recovery of his health. He was a soldier, had been some years abroad, and without a home. His parents being dead, he had resolved on spending the period of his sick leave on the Continent. It was his gentleness that roused the sleeping demon of my soul.

As long as Florence and I were alone, I had not a shadow of annoyance with which to quarrel, and in society, I never dreamed of giving way to my temper. I could curb it there, hypocrite and coward that I was! Even when I first grew jealous of William Lethbridge, I contrived to keep my passion within bounds till he was gone, and thenpoor, poor, Florence; God help her!

When but a boy at Winchester, Florence Daveney and I met in the neighborhood of that grave town, where churchmen held their state, and dignified old ladies walked out periodically in substantial silks. Her mother was one of those sober-minded gentlewomen, and had long been my mother's infinite friend, but until I was established as a "Winchester scholar," we had resided in another county. On leaving school for college, my widowed parent did not change her abode; thus for some years Florence and I were constantly associated, and having passed my examination, and taken a very fair degree, I made my proposals and was accepted, but not without hesitation, especially on the part of Mrs. Daveney. Whence this hesitation? I had a fair fortune, good connexions, what is considered by the world a high sense of honor, and great reversionary prospects. I was happy in my choice, and Florence loved me; but alas! my passionate and jealous temper constantly embittered the hours that ought to have been so happily spent. With what tears of anguish has poor Florence declared But the ebullitions which she had been she could never find happiness in a union for some time able to soothe or evade, or, with myself! How often have I fallen at alas! to bear, could not long be unobserved her feet, entreating her forgiveness, and by Lethbridge. They became more devowing with oaths, only too soon broken, to cided every time he visited us. At first he treat her with more kindness and respect; would leave the house without remark, how often have my unjust and violent ac- when I burst forth into violent paroxyms of cusations been met with dignified silence or rage at trifles; an open window, a creaking mild remonstrances; often too with fits of door, a stupid servant, a letter mislaidpassionate weeping, which laid the unhappy most probably by myself-or visitors, my girl on her bed for many days, and brought wife's visitors. My jealousy fell on all obher from it pale and exhausted. Even my jects alike, to whom her time was given, if mother became averse to our union. She I had a mind a mind to occupy it, no matpitied Florence from her soul, and Mrs. ter how. How was it that, loving her as I Daveney, with solemn warnings to her did, I lived but to torment her? If any daughter, implored her to dismiss me.

But inconvenience arose out of my own errors, I would break forth in invectives which startled the household, and generally wound up the day by blaming my innocent wife for all its mischances.

my victim's life, despite my wretched temper, was bound up in mine. Her mother gave her consent with a tremulous lip and pallid face; and mine, on her knees to me,

with a ghastly face and quivering lips, bending over her infants in evident anguish. She left me, and I, blind to my errors, blamed her as false and vicious, whom my jealous fury had well nigh driven out of her senses.

One evening, William Lethbridge came William's lodgings. I felt sure she had in in the midst of one of these miserable gone for ever when the nurse told me how and degrading exhibitions. I had worked she had visited the children's little beds myself into a perfect fury. Florence had dared to remonstrate with me on giving way to my temper, and, angry with her, angry with him for coming in so inopportunely, still more angry with myself, I became so violently excited that he took Florence's hand and led her from the room. By degrees I observed my victim quail whenever I entered her presence. I found her frequently in tears. I grew hatefully jealous of Lethbridge, and yet he and Florence never walked out together now, as they had been used to do; he did not call on us as often as of old, and when he did, his visits were constrained and short. But one morning he came with a brilliant bouquet of flowers; he found me in Florence's little morning room, whither I had followed her from the breakfast-table to torment her. My children, my sweet twins, even shrank from my scowling gaze, but looking up in Lethbridge's face, they would hold out their arms and cry to go to him.

I sat down, determined to prevent all conversation between Florence and my cousin; at last I made some remark which the latter could not help noticing; some coarse allusion to men who " sneaked into other men's houses, where their presence was undesired," wishing that "people would not interrupt my domestic circle, and hinting broadly at the folly of married women encouraging the attentions of any d-d idiot willing to throw away his time on them."

And the world pitied me! branding her with hideous epithets. Ha! ha! so much for men's privileges! I had solaced my hours with the society of a widow whose wealth commanded every sort of pleasure and amusement. The world, whatever it might think of her, said nothing of me. Oh no! I was possessed of the rights of men. Men may seek to entertain themselves when and with whom they please, but women must not laugh beyond a certain pitch; women must not give decided opinions, even if founded on what is just and good; women must put an iron padlock on their lips, and all right thinking women will admit that they cannot be too strict in their self surveillance. Still it is a wonderful thing in the present age of refinement and professed morality, that men should have such powers of evil; that the more reckless, the more dissipated, the more careless they are of the world's good opinion, the more they are sought after and caressed by the very society whose laws they desecrate, while the most dissolute and worthless of the sex are the most bitter against the unfortunate beings whom men like themselves have rendered frail and friendless.

Some people with violent tempers are With a burning cheek, and eyes in which yet susceptible of tender impulses. I have long subdued resentment flashed, at last known men with the tempers of fiends, Florence rose to leave the room, and Wil- whose natural dispositions were by no liam got up to depart; but I made my wife means unkindly, but I was not one of these, come back,-I would be heard. I said I-my jealous hate nursed itself. Lethcould not be blind to the understanding that subsisted between them; to their unchecked and disgraceful attachment to each other. Alas! I did not consider how dreadful must be the comparison between my cruelty and his kindness. I sneered at what I chose to call their "wretched efforts to deceive me." I desired my cousin to leave my house, and seeing Florence approaching me with clasped hands and streaming eyes, I pushed her from me with such violence, that she was only saved from falling on the ground by William's receiving her in his arms.

bridge and I met: he had left Florence in the neighborhood, and returned on purpose to give me the opportunity of what is barbarously called "satisfaction." I wonder I did not take the law into my own hands and strike him down without a word, but I did not having no victim immediately at hand on whom to wreak my vengeance,for my children had been taken from my sight by their cautious and tender nurse,I had leisure to determine on being deliberate in my revenge. "He shall not die," said I; "such vengeance is for those who do not know the true value of it. But I will make them miserable for life. I will She left me that night. She left me for maim and disfigure him: he shall be an

unsightly object in the eyes of the woman | Florence's wishes, framed by reason and he has taken from me!"

hallowed by affection, would have been as sweet guides to happiness!

I aimed at the knee, but the ball struck I heard next that Florence and Lethbridge higher, and thus I punished him as they did had sailed for India; he had joined his rethe traitors of old,--I deprived him of his giment with her, now his wife in the eyes of hand. I went close up to him as he lay, the world. I could fancy her shrinking faint with pain, upon the ground; I did not from notice, trembling at the idea of decepspeak, but he raised his eyes to mine. Ition, yet dreading recognition. I could sneered at him, and telling him I was "per-imagine his jealous pride in rendering her fectly satisfied," withdrew, not, however, respected, his honorable principles strugtill our friends on the occasion parted us. gling with the pride that quailed beneath After this the wealthy widow was my the world's cold yet curious eye, and yet refuge from myself. Strange that her im-deprecating the idea of introducing one placable and violent temper, so like my whom he so loved to those whose good own, did not drive me from her society! opinion must have been forfeited had they Was it sympathy that existed between us? honestly boen made aware of her true posiWas it that, in her moments of wayward- tion. Bad man as I was, I could appreciate ness and caprice, when I remonstrated she the noble struggles of a mind like William's, always alluded with bitterness to the " de- and the deep-deep anguish of my lost voted attachment" of my gentle wife? or love's soul! And sometimes I thought of was it that, with my usual selfishness, the maimed hand. coveted her gold as useful-for my property was entailed? In my youth I had been extravagant, and however large a man's income may be, it is not always that, under circumstances such as mine, he can command ready money. So the widow fairly purchased me: we were contracted long before the suit for a divorce was brought forward, and the expenses of this suit were defrayed at her cost. It was a bargain worthy of such a pair! I soon had occaslon again to bless my privileges: my affianced bride was evidently beginning to be held in light estimation by the just and virtuous, but over me or my actions none had any control; the opinion of the wise and moral was as nothing weighed against the longestablished rights of man.

Divorced from Florence, I married the woman whose wealth I coveted, whose mind I despised, whose person I had learned to dislike, and in whose fidelity I placed no reliance. She kept me at bay, however, by her stormy temper,-paid me back with interest in my own coin. The tables were turned against me: the man of the most violent passions can be outwardly tamed by the determined spirit of a woman, who, being mistress of her house and of her own property, can minister as she chooses to his comfort or annoyance. Sometimes I won

dered how I could have been so unkind to my lost Florence, whose strongest remonstrances were as gentle wishes, compared to my present wife's scornful reproofs and noisy demonstrations when she fancied herself slighted. To any other man but myself

Truly, man is a glorious creature. We talk in England of the thraldom in which the women of savage and heathen lands are held, and we shudder; but, verily, we men of England have our privileges. We may be faithless to our own wives, and drive them from us with a heavy blow; we may even rob other men of theirs,-coolly, deliberately rob them for our own selfish purposes, and not with William Lethbridge's feelings and struggles; we may shoot the husbands of our victims; and by good management, the help of a few hundred pounds, or the quibble of a clever, well-paid lawyer, be replaced in our original position. Nay, men call us brave, and women-certain blind or despicable women-speak of us as "gay," "wild," "shocking," "charming!" This world is a merry place for man!

Nevertheless, the women are the gainers in the end; for how much remorse they are spared! how much anguish they spare others, by the conventional rules to which they are happily compelled by custom to adhere! The laws of God are alike for both sexes, and those who defy them most, will have the longest account against them at the Great Day! Then-then shall man and woman stand on equal ground, and be weighed in the same scale of justice!

Now, as one world is for a period, and the other for eternity, may not the women, after all, be considered as most enviable in their position? Poor Florence! she shall have her abiding-place hereafter!

One day I heard of Lethbridge's death:

the first intelligence I received of that was lead as a woman of beauty, fortune, and through a military newspaper. The para- ability in the society wherein we moved, graph inentioned the arrival in England of discovered the source of my anxiety and dethe widow of Lieutenant Lethbridge, for pression, but, alas, she sympathized not whom a subscription had been raised by the with me. brother-officers of her husband, who had been much beloved in his corps. I knew The paragraph in the newspaper sent me, William's relations had cast him off, glad as I have said, at once to town. I made of an excuse, perhaps, to save themselves my way to the little street referred to in trouble in exerting their interest in his fa- the Times advertisement, and after ringing vor, my mother and Florence's had paid the bell twice, and calling to a wretchedthe last debt soon after our separation,-looking creature intended to represent a and all the ready money with which the ill-maid-servant, who stood in the area cleanfated pair had started in life had been spent ing knives, I was admitted within the narin the expenses attendant on the suit row limits of the hall, and left there standbrought against William by me,-but I was ing till the landlady could be summoned unprepared for such a history of poverty as from a steaming wash-house in the back this; it vexed and fretted me, but the vexa-settlements. After some persuasion, which tion was all on my own account. She who would have met with no attention but for a had once been mine to receive alms at the hint about my wishes to pay funeral exhands of indifferent people! I wrote to the penses, the woman begged me to sit down captain of the ship which was mentioned as in her parlor. I heard her, as she let the the one in which she ha i been a passenger, room, desire the maid to "keep a look out" and endeavoured to gain information, but upon the watch on the mantelpiece. Florence had landed in the docks, and after having paid the Indian Ayah who had been her attendant during the voyage, had departed in a hackney-coach with her few articles of luggage, and had not been heard of afterwards. It was said the steward of the ship had given her some assistance and directions about lodgings, but he had gone out to India again in another vessel.

-

She who lay there "dead and unowned" was my Florence,-my own lost Florence, my first love, my early playmate,-my wife whom I had driven to despair and ruin by my inhuman and brutal temper. Memory restored her voice, calling to me in her mother's garden to join her in her play,or, in after times, singing gaily under the In vain I strove to trace her. In vain I lime-trees where we met as girl and boy, accompanied Captain R- to the Custom-and where our mothers walked and talked house and other places, to inquire concern- and worked together, often, often imploring ing a "pale lady much emaciated,"-so me, after some violent freak of temper, to be Captain R. described my once blooming kind to poor Florence when we should be happy Florence; and this description of married. her helplessness made me more eager to seek her out. Had she been independent of me, I had scarcely felt such deep, unmitigated interest in her In vain I applied to the agents of William's regiment; they knew nothing of her. My pride dictated to me the offer of paying back the subscription that had been raised for her, if the generous donors would have permitted it, but this was out of the question; and all I could do in the capacity of a relation of Mr Lethbridge, was to place a considerable sum in the hands of the agents towards liquidating the expenses of a handsome tablet to the memory of the deceased. But still, with all my self-satisfaction, my imagined generosity of spirit in forgiving one who never would have injured me but for circumstances forced on him by myself, I could not be happy. My wife, now taking the

Now, there she lay on that poor bed, its faded and soiled curtains forming an unsightly canopy, above the pale, wasted, but still beautiful face. With an air of reverence, hard-featured as she was, the landlady of the lodging pulled down the sheet that covered the dead, and long and silently, and very sorrowfully, I stood gazing upon that inanimate form which restored such mingled memories of joy and sorrow, peace and violence. With such emotions my heart had never ached before: my eyes grew dim, a choking sensation fastened itself on my throat, and I would have given worlds to have been able to weep aloud, but awe drove back the tears that anguish would otherwise have called forth.

"Leave me with her," said I to the landlady, "for a little while." I took out my pocket-book, and from it a five-pound note,

and placing it in the ready-opening palm was now yellow, and some feded roses, two of the woman, she retreated without further locks of hair, and some other trifles, that parley. I sat down on the rickety bedstead, to her had been "more precious than gold, -I felt the coarse and discolored linen that yea, than fine gold." had covered my poor dead Florence. Oh, "She begged me" said the landlady, how wasted the features were! how the once" to let her have this box by her bedside. round cheek had shrunk and faded! how She was constantly turning out the things, the large and exquisitely shaped eyes were it seemed the only comfort she had to sunk in their sockets! and, ah me! the examine them every day. Strange sort of long thin hand which I lifted answered not comfort, too! for she used to cry fit to break my pressure, but fell back heavily on the her heart whenever she spread them out behard mattrass.

fore her on the bed "

One small, travel-worn trunk stood in A miniature of Lethbridge, taken evidentthe room; it was open, and had evidently ly only a short time before his death, lay at been ransacked and examined by uncaring the bottom of the case. It represented, not hands, the wretched-looking, half-starved the Lethbridge I remembered, with a gay, maid's perhaps; but few things were left, and these I recognized. A child's sock, snatched, perhaps, from the little crib on last visiting it, a crayon drawing of twin heads, our children's pictures, taken by herself when in a happy vein, a little coral necklace, a tiny doll, whose dress had once been gay !

smiling, though rather delicate face,-not the honest brow and clear open eye which had first met mine at Frankfort, beaming with gladness at the recognition,-but here was a faded, wasted cheek, large, hollow, mournful eyes, and a look of settled sorrow.

Well could I fancy Florence grieving over these relics of departed days. Poor, friendless, ill, and desolate, what a picture of misery did her image present, weeping over her melancholy treasures!

Oh

Even my

I am a melancholy man. haughty and harsh-spirited wife of the present day has ceased to sneer at the portrait of poor Florence in her gay hours, which hangs up in my little sanctum.

The landlady came in at last, and found me contemplating these mementos of former days. As I sat there half-bewildered, she described, with a painful exactness that soon roused my attention, all that her un- I saw her put into her narrow coffin: I fortunate lodger had undergone during her kissed her cold, pale lips, and hung over stay at her house, whither she had come her in an agony of unavailing sorrow. with a (( recommendation" from the stew-sins too late repented! but for my miseraard of the Amherst East Indiaman. She ble temper, she who lay there might now had suffered all the degradation of being have been my happy wife! stared at, doubted, and almost refused admittance; "for," said the landlady, in a careless tone, "I saw the poor thing was in a consumption, and what was I to do with her if she fell ill and died, as you see she did? But she took her watch and chain from her neck at once, begging me to let her remain here for a week, and, really, I had not the heart to refuse. She had a good many Indian trinkets, which she put into my hands when she first took to her bed, and she asked me to send for a medical man and get her a few comforts. Here are some of the trinkets," she continued, opening a small mahogany case, "I was going to sell 'em this very day, but they would never fetch their value, nor pay me back what I've spent."

I lifted up the tray of the jewel-case, and found an ivory ring discolored by time; it had been our girl's,-our little Florence's, -and the faded pink ribbon which the Ichild had worn round her neck was still attached to it. There was also a little baby's cap that had once been white, but

My children have been told her history, and when my boy, whose passions, were they uncorrected, would be as violent as my own, looks up, as I have taught him to do, and the gentle eye of his unfortunate mother speaks, as it were to him from the insensible canvas, it brings him back to better thoughts, and quells the demon struggling for the mastery in his heart.

There is in one of those beautiful cemeteries near London, a small patch of ground railed off, and planted with many shrubs, chiefly evergreens. In summer, a weeping willow and an acacia relieve its mournful air, and bright flowers spring up and flourish round a tomb, inscribed simply with the name of

"FLORENCE."

There my lost love lies, and her gravestone is as a talisman set there by the hand