cumstances, would probably have
run astray under any. She was very vain of her beauty and talents, and
had been spoiled by the idolatry and flattery of all who surrounded her.

"I will not pain you by entering into any particulars; in brief, she
disgraced herself, and was ruined.

"The rage, the passionate despair, the blind fury of the injured
husband, it was said, exceeded all bounds. There was of course every
sort of public scandal. Legal proceedings and the necessary
consequences--a divorce. The wretched history did not even end here. She
suffered horribly from shame and despair I have been told, but the shame
and despair, had not the effect it ought to have produced. She fell from
bad to worse, and was utterly lost. The husband did the same. Wild with
the stings of wounded affection, blinded with suffering, he flew for
refuge to any excitement which would for a moment assuage his agonies;
the gaming-table, and excess in drinking, soon finished the dismal
story. He shot himself in a paroxysm of delirium tremens, after having
lost almost every penny he possessed at Faro.

"You tremble Catherine. Your hand in mine is cold. Oh the pernicious
woman! Oh the depths of the misery--if I were indeed to tell you all I
have met with and known--which are entailed upon the race by the vanity,
the folly, and the vice of women. Angels! yes, angels you are. Sweet
Saint--sweet Catherine, and men fall down and worship you--but woe for
them when she they worship, proves a fiend.

"Dear Miss Arnold, you are shedding tears--but you _would_ have this
dismal story. You had better hear no more of it, let me stop now."

"Go on--pray go on, Edgar. Tell us about the poor boy and the girls, you
said there were four of them."

"The boy and his sisters were taken by some relations. It was about a
year after these events that I met him at this school. They had sent him
here, thinking the army the best place for him. To get him shot off,
poor fellow, perhaps, if they could. His four sisters were all then
living, and how tenderly, poor lad, he used to talk to me about them.
How he would grieve over the treatment they were receiving, with the
best intentions he acknowledged, but too hardening and severe he thought
for girls so delicate. They wanted a mother's fostering, a father's
protection, poor things, but he never alluded in the remotest way to
either father or mother. Adam, when he sprung from the earth, was not
more parentless than he se