After the Storm

Irene Delancy was a girl of quick, strong feelings, and an

undisciplined will. Her mother died before she reached her tenth

year. From that time she was either at home under the care of

domestics, or within the scarcely more favorable surroundings of a

boarding-school. She grew up beautiful and accomplished, but

capricious and with a natural impatience of control, that unwise

reactions on the part of those who attempted to govern her in no

degree tempered.

Hartley Emerson, as a boy, was self-willed and passionate, but

possessed many fine qualities. A weak mother yielded to his resolute

struggles to have his own way, and so he acquired, at an early age,

control over his own movements. He went to college, studied hard,

because he was ambitious, and graduated with honor. Law he chose as

a profession; and, in order to secure the highest advantages,

entered the office of a distinguished attorney in the city of New

York, and gave to its study the best efforts of a clear, acute and

logical mind. Self-reliant, proud, and in the habit of reaching his

ends by the nearest ways, he took his place at the bar with a

promise of success rarely exceeded. From his widowed mother, who

died before he reached his majority, Hartley Emerson inherited a

moderate fortune with which to begin the world. Few young men

started forward on their life-journey with so small a number of

vices, or with so spotless a moral character. The fine intellectual

cast of his mind, and his devotion to study, lifted him above the

baser allurements of sense and kept his garments pure.

Such were Irene Delancy and Hartley Emerson--lovers and betrothed at

the time we present them to our readers. They met, two years before,

at Saratoga, and drew together by a mutual attraction. She was the

first to whom his heart had bowed in homage; and until she looked

upon him her pulse had never beat quicker at sight of a manly form.

Mr. Edmund Delancy, a gentleman of some wealth and advanced in

years, saw no reason to interpose objections. The family of Emerson

occupied a social position equal with his own; and the young man's

character and habits were blameless. So far, the course of love ran

smooth; and only three months intervened until the wedding-day.

The closer relation into which the minds of the lovers came after

their betrothal and the removal of a degree of deference and

self-constraint, gave opportunity for the real character of each to

show itself. Irene could not always repress her willfulness and

impatience of another's control; nor her lover hold a firm hand on

quick-springing anger when anything checked his purpose. Pride and

adhesiveness of character, under such conditions of mind, were

dangerous foes to peace; and both were proud and tenacious.

The little break in the harmonious flow of their lives, noticed as

occurring while the tempest raged, was one of many such incidents;

and it was in consequence of Mr. Delancy's observation of these

unpromising features in their intercourse that he spoke with so much

earnestness about the irreparable ruin that followed in the wake of

storms.