up
to Mary's room to comfort her poor heart. She was comforted and
quieted, though she declined leaving her room till after Mr.
Gardner's departure; and I left her, at her own request, to silent
reflection.

"And now you will think all the trouble was over. But did ever faint
heart win fair ladie? Never. And Mr. Gardner's heart did not sink when
he was told the true story of Mary's indifference and aversion. Both
brother and lover had deceived themselves, or rather they had not
thought about it. But now that he did think about it, Mr. Gardner was
not inclined to relinquish the pursuit. He knew that women were fickle
and strange beings, and oft-times refused the very happiness they were
dying to possess. Whether Mary were of this species he knew not, but
at all events the prize was worth trying for. So he told Mr. Dunbar he
would not trouble Mary more at present, but leave it to time. Time did
a great many things. Time might make him acceptable to the very heart
that now tossed him as a scorned thing away.

"Now Alice, my dear child, don't give up my Mary, nor think her a
heartless being, when I tell you that in six months from that time she
became Mrs. Gardner. A very lovely bride she was, too--pale as a
snow-drop, and graceful as the lake-lily. She smiled, too, with a sort
of contented smile, not radiant, not heartfelt, not joyous; there were
no deeps of her being stirred as she stood calm and passionless by the
altar, and promised to love and honor Mr. Gardner, but a very quiet
and pensive sort of pleasure. A part of her soul seemed to have been
buried with the past, and to have been forcibly crushed down with all
its young ardor and bloom forever; but above it was an everyday being,
full of determination to do her duty, to make her husband happy, and
be as happy herself as she could. So she was married; and so she
stepped into a handsome carriage with Mr. Gardner, and the bridemaids
and groomsmen followed in another; and never was there a gayer and
merrier cavalcade than at Mary Dunbar's marriage.

CHAPTER II.

"Now, my dear girls, you must skip over a few years, during which I
neither saw nor heard of Mary Dunbar. I returned from a journey which
I had been taking, and was glad to feel that Mr. Gardner's house lay
in my nearest route home. I longed to see Mary in her new character,
now that she had had time to feel and perform her duties, and proposed
to be with her for a few days, that I might form my own op