fection, and feminine dependence, and the confi dence of youthful expectation, gave place to deep despondency, and to all the apathy of complete alienation. It was impossible for her to conceal a change so suddenly wrought in her feelings, and the good people with whom she was living, believed young Redwood's departure for Europe to be the cause of it.

They had for a long time been apprised of his secret visits, and suspicious of his designs; but the purity and gentleness of Mary's manners rebuked suspicion, and they hesitated to communicate their observations to her: besides, they were engaged with their own concerns, and the transient love affair (as they deemed it,) of an obscure young girl, seemed to them of no great moment. They felt some regret, when, after the lapse of a few days, she announced her wish to relinquish the care of their children, assigning as a reason the evident decline of her health, and she did not leave them without generous tokens of their gratitude for her fidelity. At the time of her departure, her friend, Mrs. Westall, was absent on a visit to a distant plantation; this she esteemed fortunate, for she wished to escape any observation that would have been stimulated by affection.

She resolved never to reveal the secret of her marriage; and thanking God that her parents were removed from this world, and that none remained to be deeply affected with her misfortunes, she determined to seek out some retreat where she

might be sheltered from notice. As the carriage drove away that conveyed her from the door of Mr. Emlyn, Mrs. Emlyn turned from the window where she had stood gazing after her, and said to her husband, "is it not strange that Mary should not have felt more at parting with the children? she did not seem to notice their caresses, and poor things, they cried as if their little hearts would break; she is kind-hearted too." "And did not you mind, mother," asked one of the little girls, "that when I offered that pretty shell-box Mr. Redwood gave me for a keepsake, she shivered as if she had the ague, and dropped it on the floor ?"

"Ah," said Mr. Emlyn, looking significantly at his wife," it is easy enough to see where the shoe pinches. I tell you my dear, that fellow has nearly broken the girl's heart. It is just so with all your tribe; 'all for love, or the world well lost.' But she will come to her senses. 'Sur les ailes du temps la tristesse s'envole.'"

70

CHAPTER IV.

Si un homme honnête avoit fait un mal irreparable à un être innocent, comment, sans le secours de l'expiation religeuse, s'en consolerait-il jamais." Mad. de Stael.

REDWOOD joined his friend, and they embarked together for Europe, furnished with every facility for an introduction to good society which Americans could then procure. They visited Paris, and gained admission to its highest literary circles: to society the most dangerous, and the most captivating, men and women, who, from having been born thralls to the despotic dogmas and pompous ritual of the romish church, had identified the corruptions of Christianity with its truth, and rejecting the galling yoke, had loosened all necessary and salutary restraints. There was in them much to be admired by a virtuous person, much to excite the sympathy of the representative of a young republic, for they had an unaffected zeal for the happiness of their species, and a genuine hatred of every mode of tyranny. They had too, an amenity and exquisite refinement of manners, which they owed to the vital spirit that Christianity had infused into civilized life, and which remained after the spirit had departed; as the body from which the soul has fled, retains, while life is still recent, its fair proportions, and

beautiful expression; or, as a plant which the passing gale has uprooted, is still decorated with the flowers that owed their birth to the parent earth. In these circles, Redwood's devotion to intellectual power (the ruling passion of his youth) revived, and he resigned himself to the charms of society, to those pleasures which one who was their victim, has, with a few vivid touches, described "la parole n'y est pas seulement comme ailleurs un moyen de se communiquev ses id es, ses sentiments, et ses affaires mais c'est un instrument dont on aime à jouer et qui ranime les esprits, comme la musique chez quelque peuples, et les liqueurs fortes chez quelques autres."* And in these circles, Redwood felt that Paris "etait le lieu du monde où l'on pouvoit le mieux se passer de bonheur."+

While he remained in the french capital, there was no suspension of excitement, not an hour for reflection, scarcely a solitary moment for the impertinent whispering of conscience. His wife, the young and innocent creature who had surrendered to him the whole treasure of her affections, abandoned, solitary, sick, and heart-broken, was scarcely remembered, or if remembered, was

* Conversation is not there as elsewhere, simply a medium for the communication of ideas and sentiments, and the transaction of business; but it is an instrument on which they delight to play, and which excites their spirits, like music among some nations, and strong liquors among others.

+ Paris was that place in the whole world where one might best dispense with happiness.

always associated with the dark cloud with which she had shaded his future fortunes. But after he had left Paris, in the further prosecution of his travels, there were times when she was remembered; the powers of conscience, spell-bound by the noise and glare of society, were awakened by the voice of the Divinity issuing from the eloquent places of nature. The pure streams, the placid lakes, the green hills, and the "fixed mountains looking tranquillity," seemed to reproach him with his desertion of nature's fairer work; for all the works of nature are linked together by an invisible, an "electric chain." Redwood hurried from place to place; he tried the power of novelty, of activity; he gazed on those objects that have been the marvel, and the delight of the world; and when the first excitement was over, he felt that he could not resist the great moral law which has indissolubly joined virtue and happiness.

On his arrival at Rome he found letters awaiting him there. To avoid the hazard of discovery, he had determined that all intercourse between himself and his wife should be suspended during his absence, and had purposely omitted to furnish her with his address-his anxiety to receive some intelligence from her, had however, become so strong that he would now have willingly incurred any risk for that gratification. On turning over his letters, he noticed one in a hand writing which he recognised to be that of the clergyman who had married him to Mary Erwine; he hastily tore it