first time upon
the face of his wife--when lo and behold! instead of an ugly and
disfigured face, he saw before him a countenance radiant with celestial
beauty! 'Dear husband,' said the lovely wife, casting her arms around
her astonished and happy lord, 'you loved me truly, although you thought
me ugly; such devotion and such disinterested love well merit the prize
of beauty.'

'Now, I feel assured,' said Mr. Thurston to himself, pursuing the
current of his thoughts--'that this young lady, Miss Franklin, is trying
to deceive me in a similar manner, in order to test the sincerity of my
affection; and should I marry her, I would find her to be a paragon of
beauty. Egad, she is so accomplished and bewitching, that I've more than
half a mind to propose, and make her Mrs. T.'

The worthy deacon (for such he was,) being a middle-aged man of very
good looks, and moreover very rich, Josephine was determined to 'catch
him' if she could; she therefore took advantage of his disbelief in her
deformity, and, while she persisted in her assurances that she was
hideously ugly, she made those assurances in a manner so light and
playful, that Mr. T. would have taken his oath that she was beautiful,
and he became more and more smitten with the mysterious veiled lady,
whose face he had never seen.

Josephine, with consummate art, was resolved, if possible, to entice him
into matrimony; and once his wife, she knew that in case he refused to
live with her on discovering her awful deformity, he would liberally
provide for her support, and thus her mother and herself would be
enabled again to live in luxury. As for Sophia, she no longer lived with
them--the fair, innocent girl had gone to occupy a position to be stated
hereafter.

We now resume the conversation between Mrs. Franklin and her daughter,
which we interrupted by the above necessary explanation.--'Which opinion
you have artfully encouraged, Josephine,' said Mrs. Franklin--'and you
will of course suffer him to enjoy that opinion, until after your
marriage with him, which event is, I think, certain; then you can reveal
your true condition to him, and if he casts you off, he will be obliged
to afford you a sufficient income, which we both so much need; for he
cannot charge you with having deceived him, as you represent to him your
real condition, and if he chooses to disbelieve you, that is his own
affair, not yours.'

'True, mother; and the marriage must be speedily accomplished