Bressant

"Well, it was before the old Knickerbocker's death that he I am telling

you of first arrived in the city. He gave up medicine, and devoted

himself to other studies; and, in the course of a few years, he found

himself occupying the chairs of History and of Science at the University

of New York. He also paid some attention to politics, and became, for a

while, a person of really considerable renown and distinction. He was

respected by the most influential persons in the city. Among the rest,

he became acquainted with the widow--as she was by this time--of the

Knickerbocker--and she showed him every kindness and attention. But he

did her the injustice of not believing her kindness genuine; he imagined

that she cared for nothing but fashion and display, and was polite to

him only because she thought he would add a little to her drawing-rooms.

At length, a sudden weariness of his mode of life coming over him, he

resigned his public positions, and his professorships, and took lodgings

in the family of a poor clergyman in Boston. While there, he took up the

study of divinity, and, before long, was fully qualified for ordination.

But, at this time, he fell, all at once, dangerously ill, and lay at

death's door.

"He owed his life to the care that the daughter of the clergyman took of

him. She was a sweet, gentle girl, a good deal younger than he; but she

grew to love him--perhaps because she had saved him from death. When he

recovered, they were married, and found a great deal of happiness; there

was no more passionate love, for him, of course; but he could feel

gratitude, and tenderness, and a steady and deep affection. They had two

children, and when they were five or six years old, the parents moved to

the country, and took a house in an out-of-the-way village."

"Is that all?" demanded Bressant, eying the professor's face with great

intentness.

"There's not much more. One of the first persons the minister--such he

was now--met, on his entrance into the village, was the woman he had

loved first--the wife of his false friend--she whom he had long believed

dead. She had settled, several years before, in this place, whither he

had unawares followed her. In an interview--the first for nearly half a

lifetime--all the old errors and falsehoods were cleared up. She told

him how her husband's heartlessness and insolent indifference had made

her leave him; and how, for the sake of her son, and partly also out of

pride, she had made no attempt to repossess herself of the fortune with

which she had endowed her husband at their marriage. The hardest of all

had been to leave her son, whom she loved with her whole heart; but he

was sickly, and she dared not expose him to the chances of privation and

hardship, such as she expected to endure. With some three thousand

dollars in her pocket, she had come to America, and since then had

never heard a word of those she had left, nor had they of her.