htly does it float--,
Lightly seeds of care are sown,
Little do we note.
Watch life's thistles bud and blow,
Oh, 'tis pleasant folly;
But when all life's paths they strew,
Then comes melancholy.
Poetry Past and Present.

Mary Ponsonby had led a life of change and wandering that had given her
few strong local attachments. The period she had spent at Ormersfield,
when she was from five to seven years old, had been the most joyous
part of her life, and had given her a strong feeling for the place
where she had lived with her mother, and in an atmosphere of affection,
free from the shadow of that skeleton in the house, which had darkened
her childhood more than she understood.

The great weakness of Mrs. Ponsonby's life had been her over-hasty
acceptance of a man, whom she did not thoroughly know, because her
delicacy had taken alarm at foolish gossip about herself and her
cousin. It was a folly that had been severely visited. Irreligious
himself, Mr. Ponsonby disliked his wife's strictness; he resented her
affection for her own family, gave way to dissipated habits, and made
her miserable both by violence and neglect. Born late of this unhappy
marriage, little Mary was his only substantial link to his wife, and he
had never been wanting in tenderness to her: but many a storm had raged
over the poor child's head; and, though she did not know why the kind
old Countess had come to remove her and her mother, and 'papa' was
still a loved and honoured title, she was fully sensible of the calm
security at Ormersfield.

When Mr. Ponsonby had recalled his wife on his appointment at Lima,
Mary had been left in England for education, under the charge of his
sister in London. Miss Ponsonby was good and kind, but of narrow
views, thinking all titled people fashionable, and all fashionable
people reprobate, jealous of her sister-in-law's love for her own
family, and, though unable to believe her brother blameless, holding it
as an axiom that married people could not fall out without faults on
both sides, and charging a large share of their unhappiness on the
house of Fitzjocelyn. Principle had prevented her from endeavouring to
weaken the little girl's affection to her mother; but it had been her
great object to train her up in habits of sober judgment, and freedom
from all the romance, poetry, and enthusiasm which she fancied had been
injurious to Mrs. Ponsonby. The soil was of the ver