y
mated, die, daily, around us; moving on to the grave, so far as the
world knows, by the way of some fatal bodily ailment; yet, in truth,
failing by a heart-sickness that has dried up the fountains of life.

And so it was with the wife of Edward Leslie. Greatly her husband
wondered at the shadows which fell, more and more heavily, on
Madeline--wondered as time wore on, at the paleness of her
cheeks--the sadness which, often, she could not repress when he was
by; the variableness of her spirits--all tending to destroy the
balance of her nervous system, and, finally, ending in confirmed
ill-health, that demanded, imperiously, the diversion of his
thoughts from business and worldly schemes to the means of
prolonging her life.

Alas! What a sad picture to look upon, would it be, were we to
sketch, even in outline, the passing events of the ten years that
preceded this conviction on the part of Mr. Leslie. To Madeline, his
cold, hard, impatient, and, too frequently, cruel re-actions upon
what he thought her unreasonable, captious, dissatisfied states of
mind, having no ground but in her imagination, were heavy
heart-strokes--or, as a discordant hand dashed among her
life-chords, putting them forever out of tune. Oh! The wretchedness,
struggling with patience and concealment, of those weary years. The
days and days, during which her husband maintained towards her a
moody silence, that it seemed would kill her. And yet, so far as the
world went, Mr. Leslie was among the best of husbands. How little
does the world, so called, look beneath the surface of things!

With the weakness of failing health, came, to Madeline, the loss of
mental energy. She had less and less self-control. A brooding
melancholy settled upon her feelings; and she often spent days in
her chamber, refusing to see any one except members of her own
family, and weeping if she were spoken to.

"You will die, Madeline. You will kill yourself!" said her husband,
repeating, one day, the form of speech so often used when he found
his wife in these states of abandonment. He spoke with more than his
usual tenderness, for, to his unimaginative mind had come a quickly
passing, but vivid realization, of what he would lose if she were
taken from him.

"The loss will scarcely be felt," was her murmured answer.

"Your children will, at least, feel it," said Mr. Leslie, in a more
captious and meaning tone than, upon reflection, he would have used.
He felt her words