soul
within which shone over these features and lighted them at times with
supernatural loveliness. And was this brilliant being understood and
appreciated by the man who had won her for his bride? Faugh!--we blush at
our own stupidity in asking the question. Are such lofty souls ever
appreciated by even one of the swarming masses that people the earth with
their corporeal bodies? Let those answer who can.

But Louise, soaring as was her nature, was yet cursed with that weakness
which too often possesses souls like hers, swaying e'en a more tyrant
sceptre than in meaner breasts, as though in envious hate of those
sky-aspiring pinions, and a demon wish to make them lick the dust. She
was an orphan, with no relative save a maiden aunt, with whom she dwelt.
She felt alone in the wide world, and she wanted--O, pity her, reader, if
you can!--she wanted somebody to lean on, somebody to look up to. Could
she not lean on her own strong intellect, and look up to the stars?--or
could she not breathe forth her rich-laden soul in lofty song and
romance, and lean upon the pillars of a world-wide fame? No, O, no! With
all her strength of soul and intellect, she had weak woman's heart. She
must love and be loved; and when the wealthy Mr. Leroy Edson knelt, an
enamored knight, at the shrine of her youth and beauty, she gave him her
hand. He thought he had done a most generous deed in thus raising a poor,
lone orphan girl from comparative obscurity to a position among the
highest circles of society. Her superior education and gem-freighted soul
were all the fortune she brought him; a fortune greater than the
treasures of Ind., but of whose princely value he had not the power to
form the most distant estimate. To behold her tall, graceful figure
flitting through his elegant mansion, performing some light household
duty, receiving her guests or chatting and singing gayly through the long
evenings, was, to him, life's whole of happiness. And was Louise
altogether content with the man of her choice? No, or she had not
gathered Wimbledon about her to make merry the midnight hour. People do
not give fetes to display their happiness. They give them too often to
relieve a tedious monotony, to silence a gnawing discontent, and forget
for the moment in hilarious excitement some uneasy foreboding of evil to
come, or disquieting conviction that all, even now, is not as it should
be.

Louise had not been many weeks Mrs. Edson, before she discovere