nsignment" of the three Miss Revels
to India, Mrs Revel had consented to borrow money, insuring her life as a
security to the parties who provided it. Her unprincipled husband took this
opportunity of obtaining a sum which amounted to more than half her
marriage settlement, as Mrs Revel signed the papers laid before her without
examining their purport. When her dividends were become due, this treachery
was discovered; and Mrs Revel found herself reduced to a very narrow
income, and wholly deserted by her husband, who knew that he had no chance
of obtaining further means of carrying on his profligate career. His death
in a duel, which we have before mentioned, took place a few months after
the transaction, and Mrs Revel was attacked with that painful disease, a
cancer, so deeply seated as to be incurable. Still she was the same
frivolous, heartless being; still she sighed for pleasure, and to move in
those circles in which she had been received at the time of her marriage.
But, as her income diminished, so did her acquaintances fall off; and at
the period of Isabel's return, with the exception of Mr Heaviside and one
or two others, she was suffered to pine away in seclusion.

Isabel was greeted with querulous indifference until the explanation of the
first ten minutes; then, as an heiress, with the means as well as the
desire of contributing to her mother's comforts, all was joy and
congratulation. Her incurable disease was for the time forgotten; and
although pain would occasionally draw down the muscles of her face, as soon
as the pang was over, so was the remembrance of her precarious situation.
Wan and wasted as a spectre, she indulged in anticipation of again mixing
with the fashionable world, and talked of _chaperoning_ Isabel to private
parties and public amusements, when she was standing on the brink of
eternity. Isabel sighed as she listened to her mother, and observed her
attenuated frame; occasionally she would refer to her mother's state of
health, and attempt to bring her to that serious state of mind which her
awful situation demanded; but in vain: Mrs Revel would evade the subject.
Before a week had passed, she had set up an equipage, and called upon many
of her quondam friends to announce the important intelligence of her
daughter's wealth. Most of them had long before given orders not to be "at
home to Mrs Revel." The few to whom, from the remissness of their porters,
she obtained admittance, were satisfie