f this world's worship--are there, in that
quiet softly-lit room; but not alone. Away in the dim light behind, is a
solitary figure, ever mournful and ever still. It is a woman's form;
but how wasted and how weak!--a woman's face; but how ghastly and
changeless, with those eyes that are vacant, those lips that are
motionless, those cheeks that the blood never tinges, that the freshness
of health and happiness shall never visit again! Woeful, warning figure
of dumb sorrow and patient pain, to fill the background of a picture of
Love, and Beauty, and Youth!

I am straying from my task. Let me return to my narrative: its course
begins to darken before me apace, while I now write.

The partial restraint and embarrassment, caused at first by the strange
terms on which my wife and I were living together, gradually vanished
before the frequency of my visits to North Villa. We soon began to speak
with all the ease, all the unpremeditated frankness of a long intimacy.
Margaret's powers of conversation were generally only employed to lead
me to exert mine. She was never tired of inducing me to speak of my
family. She listened with every appearance of interest, while I
talked of my father, my sister, or my elder brother; but whenever she
questioned me directly about any of them, her inquiries invariably
led away from their characters and dispositions, to their personal
appearance, their every-day habits, their dress, their intercourse with
the gay world, the things they spent their money on, and other topics of
a similar nature.

For instance; she always listened, and listened attentively, to what I
told her of my father's character, and of the principles which regulated
his life. She showed every disposition to profit by the instructions I
gave her beforehand, about how she should treat his peculiarities when
she was introduced to him. But, on all these occasions, what really
interested her most, was to hear how many servants waited on him; how
often he went to Court; how many lords and ladies he knew; what he said
or did to his servants, when they committed mistakes; whether he was
ever angry with his children for asking him for money; and whether he
limited my sister to any given number of dresses in the course of the
year?

Again; whenever our conversation turned on Clara, if I began by
describing her kindness, her gentleness and goodness, her simple winning
manners--I was sure to be led insensibly into a digression about