"His life has not been a happy one. I have understood this since we have been here; for although his health and mind have been impaired by past anxieties, he has enjoyed more peace than in all the years I can remember of his previous life.

"There is a general but unobtrusive kindness manifested towards him by all the neighbors-cordial, almost compassionate greetings from those persons we meet in our long walks; and I have often been surprised by the genuine refinement of feeling that sometimes appears in the very roughest (externally) of our people.

"I fear, Marion, that there is something plebeian in me, for after all mamma's training and injunctions, I cannot turn coldly from such homely kindnesses; and in the quaint stories that the old people relate for papa's amusement, I take real pleasure, besides that of seeing him entertained.

"We have been much together this summer, and have had many happy days; but, Marion, I fear they are drawing to a close. Do come, and come quickly."

Such an appeal was not to be resisted. But when Marion and Dr. Wood reached Montiluna, they found Mr. Lyndsay incapable of recognising them; and but a few days elapsed ere the old man was laid at rest beneath the trees that shaded his first home and his last.

Poor Mrs. Lyndsay! For the first time in her life, her energy forsook her. She had so

disbelieved the signs of her husband's decline, that the event came upon her with overwhelming force. She was utterly incapable of making any exertion, or of giving any directions for the arrangement of her property; and Dr. Wood, after consulting Julia and Marion, decided to let the place to Mr. Peters, and to remove Mrs. Lyndsay with Julia to Mrs. Sumner's.

It was a cold, dark morning in early spring when Mrs. Lyndsay left the scene of (as she considered it) her humiliation; the home she might have made bright; the grave of him she might have made happy-but for her worldly spirit.

Yet neither relief nor

regret, animated her face.

she endured rather than

interest, hope nor

Cold and apathetic, accepted the atten

tions of her companions, no tear or smile breaking the stillness of that stony calm.

A winter journey was then a serious undertaking, involving weariness, discomfort, often danger. She felt nothing, cared for nothing,

and her friends could only hope that time might bring a relief that seemed unattainable by other means.

But an event had already taken place that completed the sad chain of consequences proceeding from her mistaken life.

CHAPTER XV.

THE LAST OF EARTH.

"We lingered long by that cold grave side,

While back to the world swept the funeral tide,
Far from the death-beach it ebbed away,

Nor missed from its bosom a drop of spray.

A drop of spray.

And must dust absorb it? Ah, no, if she shone
Amongst Christ's jewels, a precious stone,
When judgment shall open the grave's rough shell,
She may be a pearl,-but we cannot tell,

We cannot tell."

THE day after Marion and her uncle had left New York, Frank Enfield called at Mrs. Sumner's on his way down town.

"Aunt Amy, where is Oscar?" he asked. "Gone, Frank, this half-hour."

"I am very sorry; I hoped to have reached here before he left. There is news in this morning's paper that, I think, will make it necessary for some of us to go to New Orleans."

"What is it, Frank? Is Matilda ?—has anything happened?"

"It is about her husband: but you will read quicker than I can tell you, Aunt Amy. Here is the paper."

With a thousand wild conjectures hurrying through her mind, Mrs. Sumner took the paper; but the paragraph, though not long, seemed to declare a stranger mystery than she had even imagined.

"A most extraordinary domestic mystery has been brought to light, and the whole occurrence is of so singular and painful a nature as to have caused the greatest excitement in our city to-day.

"Two Frenchmen, named Brousseau and De Brie, have, for the last three or four years, kept a gambling house, on street, which has become somewhat noted for the high play carried on there, and of late for some suspicions that there was a very ingenious and extensive system of fraud carried on by the two accomplished partners. At length, measures were taken to bring this to a test; and, last night, a number of our citizens, accompanied by officers, disguised, and furnished with proper warrants, to be used, if necessary, joined the usual party in these

rooms.

"All was conducted with apparent fairness, until a late hour in the evening, when many of the young men had drunk enough