ave brought out better feelings under happier skies; old acquaintances,
false friends forgotten, would have neutralized old feuds: and, by
long-living together, though it were perhaps amid various worries and
many cares, they might still have come to a good old age with more than
average happiness, and more than the common run of love. Patience in
dutiful enduring brings a sure reward: and marriage, however irksome a
constraint to the foolish and the gay, is still so wise an ordinance,
that the most ill-assorted couple imaginable will unconsciously grow
happy, if they only remain true to one another, and will learn the
wisdom always to hope and often to forgive.

The Tracys, however, overlooked all this, and mutual friends (those
invariable foes to all that is generous and unworldly) smiled upon the
prudence of their temporary separation. The captain was to come home
again on furlough in five years at furthest, even if the aunt held out
so long; and this availed to keep his wife in the rear-guard; therefore,
Mrs. Tracy wiped her eyes, bade adieu to her retreating lord in Plymouth
Sound, and determined to abide, with other expectant dames and Asiatic
invalided heroes, at Burleigh-Singleton, until she might go to him, or
he return to her: for pleasant little Burleigh, besides its contiguity
to arriving Indiamen, was advantageous as being the dwelling-place of
aforesaid Mrs. Green;--that wealthy, widowed aunt, devoutly wished in
heaven: and the considerate old soul had offered her designing niece a
home with her till Tracy could come back.

During the first year of absence, ship-letters and India-letters arrived
duteously in consecutive succession: but somehow or other, the regular
post, in no long time afterwards, became unfaithful to its trust; and if
Mrs. Jane heard quarterly, which at any rate she did through the agent,
when he remitted her allowance, she consoled herself as to the captain's
well-being: in due course of things, even this became irregular; he was
far up the country, hunting, fighting, surveying, and what not; and no
wonder that letters, if written at all, which I rather doubt, got lost.
Then there came a long period of positive and protracted silence--months
of it--years of it; barring that her checks for cash were honoured still
at Hancock's, though they could tell her nothing of her lord; so that
Mrs. Tracy was at length seriously recommended by her friends to become
a widow; she tried on the cap, and