nd himself to the
commentaries of his own fastidious relatives, and the incivilities of a
clique to which by allegiance of birth and breeding he unfortunately
belonged.

Her own family had not been less averse to this union than the
aristocratic house of Monfort, and, had she not been the mistress of her
own acts and fortune, would, no doubt, have absolutely prevented it. As
it was, a wild wail went up from the synagogue at the loss of one of its
brightest ornaments, and the name of "Miriam Harz" was consigned to
silence forever.

Orphaned and independent, this obloquy and oblivion made little
difference to its object, especially when the broad Atlantic was placed,
as it soon was, between her and her people, and new ties and duties
arose in a strange land to bind and interest her feelings.

During her six years of married life, I have every reason to believe
that she was, as it is termed, "perfectly happy," although a mysterious
disease of the nervous centres, that baffled medical skill either to
cure or to name, early laid its grasp upon her, and brought her by slow
degrees to the grave, when her only child had just completed her fifth
year.

My father, the younger son of a nobleman who traced his lineage from
Simon de Montfort, had been married in his own estate and among his
peers before he met my mother. Poor himself (his commission in the army
constituting his sole livelihood), he had espoused the young and
beautiful widow of a brother officer, who, in dying, had committed his
wife and her orphan child to his care and good offices, on a
battle-field in Spain, and with her hand he had received but little of
this world's lucre. The very pension, to which she would have been
entitled living singly, was cut off by her second marriage, and with
habits of luxury and indolence, such as too often appertain to the
high-born, and cling fatally to the physically delicate, the burden of
her expenses was more than her husband could well sustain.

Her parents and his own were dead, and there were no relatives on either
side who could be called upon for aid, without a sacrifice of pride,
which my father would have died rather than have made. He was nearly
reduced to desperation by the circumstances of the case, when,
fortunately perhaps for both, she suddenly sickened, drooped, and died,
in his absence, during her brief sojourn at a watering-place, and all
considerations were lost sight of at the time, in view of this
unex