ut of his chair to meet his wife, who ran to
him. He seized her in his arms, and said with a hasty voice, "We're
ruined, Mary. We've got the world to begin over again, dear. It's
best that you should know all, and at once." As he spoke, he trembled
in every limb, and almost fell. He thought the news would have
overpowered his wife--his wife, to whom he had never said a hard word.
But it was he that was the most moved, sudden as the shock was to her.
When he sank back into his seat, it was the wife that took the office
of consoler. She took his trembling hand, and kissed it, and put it
round her neck: she called him her John--her dear John--her old
man--her kind old man; she poured out a hundred words of incoherent
love and tenderness; her faithful voice and simple caresses wrought
this sad heart up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheered
and solaced his over-burdened soul.

Only once in the course of the long night as they sate together, and
poor Sedley opened his pent-up soul, and told the story of his losses
and embarrassments--the treason of some of his oldest friends, the
manly kindness of some, from whom he never could have expected it--in a
general confession--only once did the faithful wife give way to emotion.

"My God, my God, it will break Emmy's heart," she said.

The father had forgotten the poor girl. She was lying, awake and
unhappy, overhead. In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents,
she was alone. To how many people can any one tell all? Who will be
open where there is no sympathy, or has call to speak to those who
never can understand? Our gentle Amelia was thus solitary. She had no
confidante, so to speak, ever since she had anything to confide. She
could not tell the old mother her doubts and cares; the would-be
sisters seemed every day more strange to her. And she had misgivings
and fears which she dared not acknowledge to herself, though she was
always secretly brooding over them.

Her heart tried to persist in asserting that George Osborne was worthy
and faithful to her, though she knew otherwise. How many a thing had
she said, and got no echo from him. How many suspicions of selfishness
and indifference had she to encounter and obstinately overcome. To
whom could the poor little martyr tell these daily struggles and
tortures? Her hero himself only half understood her. She did not dare
to own that the man she loved was her inferior; or to feel that she had