ith him was as if it had never been;
but, waking or sleeping, he was ever present to her thoughts. Oh! was it
indeed possible that she should never, _never_ see him again? No, it
could not be; he would seek her, claim her yet, her heart said; but
reason whispered that it was madness to think so, and bade her at once
make up her mind to her inevitable fate. But this she could not do--not
yet at all events. Month after month of the long dreary winter dragged
slowly on; her kind parents tried to dissipate her melancholy by taking
her to every amusement within reach, and she went, partly from
indifference as to what became of her, partly out of gratitude for their
kindness. At last the days began to lengthen, and the weather to
brighten; but spring flowers and sunny skies brought no corresponding
bloom to the faded hopes and the joyless life of Emily Sherwood. The
only hope she felt was "the hope which keeps alive despair."

One May morning, as she was listlessly looking over in a newspaper the
list of marriages, her eye fell upon a well-known name--the name of one
who at that very time ought to have knelt at the altar with her. She
uttered neither scream nor cry, but clasping her hands with one upward
look of mute despair, fell down in a dead faint. For many days she was
very ill, and sometimes quite delirious; but her mother tended her with
the most assiduous affection, while her comfort and recreation seemed
her father's sole care. They were repaid at last by her recovery, and
from that time forth she was less miserable. In such a case as Emily's,
there is not only the shock to the affections, but the terrible wrench
of all the faculties to be overcome, which ensues on the divorce of the
thoughts from those objects and that future to which they have so long
been wedded. There is not only the breaking heart to be healed, but the
whole mental current to be forcibly turned into a different channel from
that which alone habit has made easy or pleasant. "The worst," as it is
called, is, however, easier to be endured than suspense; and if Emily's
spirits did not regain their former elasticity, she ere long became
quite resigned, and comparatively cheerful.

More than a year had elapsed since that bright spring morning on which
she had beheld the irrefragable proof of her lover's perfidy, when she
received an offer of marriage from a gentleman, of good family and large
property. He had been struck by her beauty at a party where