vigil, the weary watching, the hope deferred, or it
may be the sudden stroke of the dread tyrant Death, no appeal to thy
frozen sympathies? Canst thou suffer thy better nature to resume its
deep and trance-like sleep again, and rob that poor widowed mother of
her only hope on earth, that bright, glad creature, who carries
sunshine to her otherwise desolate home, but to pinion her free and
fetterless spirit beneath the iron rule and despotic sway of the
village task-mistress?

We will leave the Misses Simpkins, and thou pleasest, reader mine, to
the enjoyment of their envy-tinctured converse, and turn the page of
Mrs. Layton's life.

An only child of wealthy parents, petted, caressed and idolized, she
had sprung into womanhood, with every wish anticipated, every desire
gratified ere half expressed, if within the reach of human
possibility, what wonder, then, that she grew wayward and willful, and
at length rashly dashed the cup of happiness of which she had drank so
freely in her sunny youth from her lip, by disobeying her too fond and
doating parents, in committing her life's destiny to the keeping of
one who they, with the anxious foresight of love, too well knew would
not hold the precious trust as sacred. Brave and handsome and gifted
he might be, but the seeds of selfishness had been too surely sown
within his heart; and he had won the idol of a worshiping crowd, more,
perchance, from a feeling of exultation and pride in being able to
bear away the prize from so many eager aspirants, than any deep-rooted
affection he felt for the fair object of his solicitude. The novelty
and the charm soon wore away, and then his beautiful bride was
neglected for his former dissolute associates. He afterward entered
the navy, and somewhat more than ten years after they were wedded,
fell in a duel provoked by his own rash, temper. From the moment that
Mrs. Layton recovered from the trance-like swoon which followed the
first sight of her husband's bleeding corpse, she seemed utterly,
entirely changed. She had truly loved him, he who lay before her now,
a victim of his own rash and selfish folly, and with all a woman's
earnest devotion would have followed him to the remotest extremes of
earth; but her feelings had been too long trampled upon, her heart too
bruised and crushed ever to be upraised again. She had leaned upon a
broken reed, and had awakened to find herself widowed, broken-hearted.
And she arose, that desolate and berea