ult her
own interest--the tale of crime and sadness, which it is my lot to tell,
would never have had truth for its foundation.

Ill-matched for happiness though they were, however well-matched as to
mutual merit, the common man of pleasure and the frivolous woman of
fashion, still the wisest way to fuse their minds to union, the
likeliest receipt for moral good and social comfort, would have been
this course of foreign scenes, of new faces, sprinkled with a seasoning
of adventure, hardship, danger, in a distant land. Gradually would they
have learned to bear and forbear; the petty quarrel would have been
forgotten in the frequent kindness; the rougher edges of temper and
opinion would insensibly have smoothed away; new circumstances would
have 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
p