aths in
life' too steep and too arduous for our strength, we might have been
happy now! Who can say, too, what development of mind and intelligence
should not have come of this life of daily effort and exertion? Frank
would have grown manly, patient, and self-relying; Kate would have been,
as she ever was, the light of our home, making us sharers in all those
gifts of her own bright and happy nature; while even I might have risen
to worthier efforts of skill than those poor failures I have now to
blush for."

Such were the regrets which filled her heart, as she sat many an hour in
solitude, grieving over the past, and yet afraid to face the future.

CHAPTER XVIII. AN ACT OF SETTLEMENT.

Were we disposed to heroics, we might compare Mrs. Ricketts's
sensations, on entering the grounds of the villa, to the feelings
experienced by the ancient Gauls when, from the heights of the Alps,
they gazed down on the fertile plains of Italy. If less colored by the
glorious hues of conquering ambition, they were not the less practical.
She saw that, with her habitual good fortune, she had piloted the
Rickettses' barque into a safe and pleasant anchorage, where she might
at her leisure refit and lay in stores for future voyaging. Already she
knew poor Dalton, as she herself said, from "cover to cover,"--she had
sounded all the shallows and shoals of his nature, and read his vanity,
his vainglorious importance, and his selfish pride, as though they were
printed on his forehead. Were Nelly to be like Kate, the victory, she
thought, could not be very difficult. "Let her have but one predominant
passion, and be it love of admiration, avarice, a taste for dress, for
scandal, or for grand society, it matters not, I'll soon make her my
own."

"This will do, Martha!" whispered she, in Miss Ricketts's ear, as they
drove up the approach.

"I think so," was the low-uttered reply.

"Tell Scroope to be cautious,--very cautious," whispered she once more;
and then turned to Dalton, to expatiate on the beauty of the grounds,
and the exquisite taste displayed in their arrangement.

"It has cost me a mint of money," said Dalton, giving way irresistibly
to his instinct of boastfulness. "Many of those trees you see there came
from Spain and Portugal; and not only the trees, but the earth that's
round them."

"Did you hear that, Martha?" interposed Mrs. Rick-etts. "Mr. Dalton very
wisely remarks that man is of all lands, while the inferior p