with the firm resolve of seeking content, and of conferring happiness in the discharge of her duties.

When Lord Henry returned from the House of Commons-and this night he did so without dropping in at his club-he found his fair young wife asleep, her cheeks still retaining the traces of recent tears. There was something peculiarly touching in the sight of that beautiful and youthful face, thus marked with sorrow, though under the blessed influence of sleep. The rich crimson lips still quivered, and broken sobs escaped them, like those of a slumbering child who had wept itself to unconsciousness; and a tear still trembled beneath the long silken lash that shaded the fair and delicate cheek.

Lord Henry stood in mute admiration, regarding the lovely object before him, and felt all the lover's enthusiasm and husband's tenderness revive in his heart, from the contemplation. His own name, uttered in the softest tone of affection, stole from the lips of the sleeper; and was followed by a sigh so deep as to agitate the snowy drapery that shrouded her finely-formed

bust. That sigh appealed more powerfully to his feelings, than the most eloquent speech could have done; and he reproached himself severely for having caused it.

"Poor, dear Emily!" thought he, "even in her dreams I am remembered. And I can be so unfeeling as to blame her disappointment at finding me so much less faultless than she expected! So pure a mind as hers cannot be expected to make allowance for the breach of veracity she has discovered, where she thought all was truth! And I, like a brute, could be angry, instead of endeavouring to soothe her wounded feelings!"

These salutary reflections produced a happy result. The morrow's sun shone on the reconciliation of Lord Henry and Lady Emily. He acknowledged the error into which a desire to avoid displeasing her had hurried him; he explained the sacrifices entailed by the conventional usages of fashionable life; the necessity of occasionally submitting to them; the expediency of a wife's cheerfully yielding to these unavoidable interruptions to domestic bliss; and by a perfect confidence in her husband, and

a freedom from exacting a monopoly of his attentions only practicable in the solitude of their country-seat, exempting him from the painful necessity of concealment or prevarication.

The tenderness with which his advice was bestowed, ensured its adoption. From that day forth Lady Emily learned to bear seeing her husband behave with the courtesy practised by every well-bred man towards women, without feeling any jealousy; submitted without uneasiness to his frequently engaging his old friends to dinner, nay, could smile at the mention of the "bewitching widow," and hear of his occasionally supping at his club without being made unhappy.

A letter despatched a few days after to her dear friend, Lady Frances Lorimer, in answer to one from that young lady announcing her approaching nuptials, contained such excellent advice on the danger of young wives exacting attentions only paid during the days of courtship, that it had the best effect on that lady. This judicious counsel considerably lowered the exaggerated and romantic expectations

she had previously indulged of the unbroken felicity of wedded lovers, and saved the husband of Lady Frances from the scenes of domestic chagrin that had clouded the conjugal happiness of Lord Henry and Lady Emily Fitzhardinge, during their first entrance as a wedded pair into fashionable life in London.

191

THE GAMESTERS:

A FRENCH STORY.

"Let no man trust the first false step of guilt,
It hangs upon a precipice,

Whose steep descent in last perdition ends."

"Such is the fate of guilt, to make slaves tools,
And then to make 'em masters by our secrets."

MADAME DE TOURNAVILLE was left a widow at an early age, with an only child, a daughter of ten years old, whose beauty and docility were as remarkable as a certain nervous temperament, that gave to her a shyness and timidity which checked the playful gaiety of childhood, and rendered her susceptible of fear on the slightest occasions.

The long illness of her husband, and the confinement and anxiety it entailed, followed