s black heart--the odious little wretch!" and she grasps
a weapon at her side. But throwing it presently down, the enthusiastic
creature rushes up to her lord and master, flings her arms round him,
and embraces him in the presence of the little company.

I am not sure whether some one else did not do likewise. We were all
in a state of extreme excitement and enthusiasm. In the midst of grief,
Love the consoler appears amongst us, and soothes us with such fond
blandishments and tender caresses, that one scarce wishes the calamity
away. Two or three days afterwards, on our birthday, a letter was
brought me in my study, which contained the following lines:--

"FROM POCAHONTAS

"Returning from the cruel fight
How pale and faint appears my knight!
He sees me anxious at his side;
'Why seek, my love, your wounds to hide?
Or deem your English girl afraid
To emulate the Indian maid?'

"Be mine my husband's grief to cheer,
In peril to be ever near;
Whate'er of ill or woe betide,
To bear it clinging at his side;
The poisoned stroke of fate to ward,
His bosom with my own to guard;
Ah! could it spare a pang to his,
It could not know a purer bliss!
'Twould gladden as it felt the smart,
And thank the hand that flung the dart!"

I do not say the verses are very good, but that I like them as well as
if they were--and that the face of the writer (whose sweet young voice I
fancy I can hear as I hum the lines), when I went into her drawing-room
after getting the letter, and when I saw her blushing and blessing
me--seemed to me more beautiful than any I can fancy out of Heaven.

CHAPTER LXXXI. Res Angusta Domi

I have already described my present feelings as an elderly gentleman,
regarding that rash jump into matrimony, which I persuaded my dear
partner to take with me when we were both scarce out of our teens. As a
man and a father--with a due sense of the necessity of mutton chops, and
the importance of paying the baker--with a pack of rash children round
about us who might be running off to Scotland to-morrow, and pleading
papa's and mamma's example for their impertinence,--I know that I ought
to be very cautious in narrating this early part of the married life
of George Warrington, Esquire, and Theodosia his wife--to call out
mea culpa, and put on a demure air, and, sitting in my comfortable
easy-chair here, profess to be in a