ldren? and will my parents ever recover the anxiety, the pain, the
sacrifices, brought on by one man's culpable neglect? Oh, uncle! if
you could look from your grave upon the misery you have caused!"--and
then, exhausted by her own emotion, the affectionate but jealous girl
began to question herself as to what she should do. After what she
considered mature deliberation, she made up her mind to upbraid her
cousin with treachery, and she put her design into execution that same
evening.

It was no easy matter to oblige her cousin to understand what she
meant; but at last the declaration that she had refused her old lover
because she had placed her affections upon Edwin Lechmere, whom she
was endeavouring to "entrap," was not to be mistaken; and the country
girl was altogether unprepared for the burst of indignant feeling,
mingled with much bitterness, which repelled the untruth. A strong fit
of hysterics, into which Mary Charles worked herself, was terminated
by a scene of the most painful kind, her father being upbraided by
her mother with "loving other people's children better than his own,"
while the curate himself knelt by the side of his betrothed, assuring
her of his unaltered affection. From such a scene Miss Adams hastened
with a throbbing brow and a bursting heart. She had no one to counsel
or console her; no one to whom she could apply for aid. For the first
time since she had experienced her uncle's tenderness, she felt she
had been the means of disturbing his domestic peace; the knowledge of
the burden she and hers were considered, weighed her to the earth; and
in a paroxysm of anguish she fell on her knees, exclaiming, "Oh, why
are the dependent born into the world! Father, father, why did you
leave us, whom you so loved, to such a fate!" And then she reproached
herself for having uttered a word reflecting on his memory. One of the
every-day occurrences of life--so common as to be hardly observed--is
to find really kind, good-natured people not "weary of well-doing."
"Oh, really I was worn out with so-and-so; they are so decidedly
unfortunate that it is impossible to help them," is a general excuse
for deserting those whose continuing misfortunes ought to render them
greater objects of sympathy.

Mr. Charles Adams was, as has been shown in our little narrative, a
kind-hearted man. Estranged as his brother and himself had been for
a number of years, he had done much to forward, and still more to
protect, his