te light and heat forever? Do not
the calmest and brightest days of autumn show clouds, that drift their
ragged edges over the golden disk, and bear down swift with their weight
of vapors, until the sun's whole surface is shrouded; and you can see no
shadow of tree or flower upon the land, because of the greater and
gulping shadow of the cloud?

Will not life bear me out; will not truth, earnest and stern, around me
make good the terrible imagination that now comes swooping, heavily and
darkly, upon my brain?

You are living in a little village not far away from the city. It is a
graceful and luxurious home that you possess. The holly and the laurel
gladden its lawn in winter; and bowers of blossoms sweeten it through
all the summer. You know each day of your return from the town, where
first you will catch sight of that graceful figure flitting like a
shadow of love beneath the trees; you know well where you will meet the
joyous and noisy welcome of stout Frank, and of tottling Nelly. Day
after day and week after week they fail not.

A friend sometimes attends you; and a friend to you is always a friend
to Madge. In the city you fall in once more with your old acquaintance
Dalton,--the graceful, winning, yet dissolute man that his youth
promised. He wishes to see your cottage home. Your heart half hesitates;
yet it seems folly to cherish distrust of a boon companion in so many of
your revels.

Madge receives him with that sweet smile which welcomes all your
friends. He gains the heart of Frank by talking of his toys and of his
pigeons; and he wins upon the tenderness of the mother by his attentions
to the child. Even you repent of your passing shadow of dislike, and
feel your heart warming toward him as he takes little Nelly in his arms
and provokes her joyous prattle.

Madge is unbounded in her admiration of your friend: he renews, at your
solicitation, his visit: he proves kinder than ever; and you grow
ashamed of your distrust.

Madge is not learned in the arts of a city life; the accomplishments of
a man-of-the world are almost new to her; she listens with eagerness to
Dalton's graphic stories of foreign _fetes_ and luxury; she is charmed
with his clear, bold voice, and with his manly execution of little
operatic airs.

----She is beautiful,--that wife who has made your heart whole by its
division,--fearfully beautiful! And she is not cold, or impassive: her
heart, though fond and earnest, is yet human;--w