John Sedley sprang up out of his chair to meet his wife, who ran to

him. He seized her in his arms, and said with a hasty voice, "We're

ruined, Mary. We've got the world to begin over again, dear. It's

best that you should know all, and at once." As he spoke, he trembled

in every limb, and almost fell. He thought the news would have

overpowered his wife--his wife, to whom he had never said a hard word.

But it was he that was the most moved, sudden as the shock was to her.

When he sank back into his seat, it was the wife that took the office

of consoler. She took his trembling hand, and kissed it, and put it

round her neck: she called him her John--her dear John--her old

man--her kind old man; she poured out a hundred words of incoherent

love and tenderness; her faithful voice and simple caresses wrought

this sad heart up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheered

and solaced his over-burdened soul.

Only once in the course of the long night as they sate together, and

poor Sedley opened his pent-up soul, and told the story of his losses

and embarrassments--the treason of some of his oldest friends, the

manly kindness of some, from whom he never could have expected it--in a

general confession--only once did the faithful wife give way to emotion.

"My God, my God, it will break Emmy's heart," she said.

The father had forgotten the poor girl. She was lying, awake and

unhappy, overhead. In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents,

she was alone. To how many people can any one tell all? Who will be

open where there is no sympathy, or has call to speak to those who

never can understand? Our gentle Amelia was thus solitary. She had no

confidante, so to speak, ever since she had anything to confide. She

could not tell the old mother her doubts and cares; the would-be

sisters seemed every day more strange to her. And she had misgivings

and fears which she dared not acknowledge to herself, though she was

always secretly brooding over them.

Her heart tried to persist in asserting that George Osborne was worthy

and faithful to her, though she knew otherwise. How many a thing had

she said, and got no echo from him. How many suspicions of selfishness

and indifference had she to encounter and obstinately overcome. To

whom could the poor little martyr tell these daily struggles and

tortures? Her hero himself only half understood her. She did not dare

to own that the man she loved was her inferior; or to feel that she had

given her heart away too soon. Given once, the pure bashful maiden was

too modest, too tender, too trustful, too weak, too much woman to

recall it. We are Turks with the affections of our women; and have

made them subscribe to our doctrine too. We let their bodies go abroad

liberally enough, with smiles and ringlets and pink bonnets to disguise

them instead of veils and yakmaks. But their souls must be seen by

only one man, and they obey not unwillingly, and consent to remain at

home as our slaves--ministering to us and doing drudgery for us.




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