“I trust Mrs. Davidson is at last satisfied.”

“In what?”

“Why, have you not heard the news of the engagement of Maria with Henry Dawson?”

“No, I have not before. But when did it occur, and are you positive it is so?”

“As to the when, sometime within a day or two; and as to the positive, the lady herself is my authority.”

“She is certainly very fortunate with her daughters.”

“So she thinks, at least this time. But I am not clear that the three former connections with Law, Physic and Divinity were exactly to her mind.”

“Certainly no three men occupy more respectable positions for their age in the community than her three sons-in-law, and as she had no fortune to give with her daughters, she should be thankful.”

“I imagine few will be inclined to differ from you; but that very want of fortune causes her to be peculiarly alive to its advantages, and hence her delight at her daughter’s engagement to young Dawson.”

“Is he so very rich?”

“Not having any marriageable daughters of my own to dispose of, I never asked him for a schedule of his effects. But I supposed you to have been well posted on that point.”

“Me! Bless you, my dear—I never trouble myself about such matters. Why should you think so?”

“Oh, I know not. A mere random remark of mine. I thought I had some faint recollection of his flirtation with Laura last winter, and knowing your prudence, supposed you had made the necessary inquiries.”

“You are much mistaken. There never was any thing between them. He is music-mad, and used frequently to come to listen to Laura’s harp. I suppose he thought it but right therefore to show her some attention in public, and hence the world interpreted it into something else. But, I assure you, there was never any thing in it.”

“I never supposed there was. I always thought Laura was merely amusing herself. But how remarkably well she is looking to-night. Who is that distinguished looking man who is paying her such marked attention?”

“That is a Mr. Ernest, who has recently returned from abroad, and has come home a perfect virtuoso, and you know that Laura’s taste lies in the same way.”

“Yes, she certainly admires a mustache, for I notice that of late she encourages no one without that fashionable appendage.”

Whilst Miss Laura Bridgeman was listening complacently to the remarks of the mustached beau by her side, and her mother and Mrs. Grayson, a fashionable widow of no particular age, and childless, were discussing things as above, in another part of the room, where lights and music added to the witchery which bright eyes and lovely forms make, young Dawson was hanging over his newly betrothed.

In the meantime her mother was receiving the congratulations of troops of friends, for Henry Dawson was, in the phrase matrimonial, “the catch of the season.” He had long been an orphan—his fortune was large, his intellect fair and well cultivated, his person and address good, and his whole appearance decidedly gentlemanly and prepossessing. That he should have “fallen in love,” as the phrase goes, with his lively fiancÉe, none wondered, and save a few anxious mothers, who, like Mrs. Bridgeman, had marriageable daughters, all heartily congratulated him.

The family connection of Mrs. Davidson was most respectable; but left a widow, with limited means and a family of young daughters, she had been condemned to much and close economy to maintain appearances and give her daughters an education to fit them for their proper positions in the world. The three eldest were, as we have seen above, respectably married, and now it is not to be wondered that she rejoiced that her youngest was to be transferred from the narrow economy of her house to the comforts and luxuries which a wealthy husband could bestow.

Did our fair heroine entertain like views? They may have crossed her mind in some of her reveries, but they were but shadows. She had given a young, pure heart with all its rich, unworked mine of virgin gold, without one thought of earthly dross about it. She loved with all the ardent devotion of young love, the handsome, intelligent youth who wooed her with soft words and pleading looks. She loved him for what he was, or what she thought he was, and not for what he had. She knew that his love for her must be most disinterested, for she had naught but herself to give, and she was happy in the feeling of loving and of being beloved.

Oh, this love! what a strange power it exercises over the actions and the minds of the human race. What blindness it produces in our mental visions—how it changes defects into beauties, and magnifies ant-hillocks to mountains—what floods of blood and floods of ink it has shed in this world, and is doomed still to shed—how it makes virtue vice and vice virtue—how it lights the torch of discord, and yet throws around the soft and beaming light of harmony—how it makes wise men idiots, and converts brave men into cowards. In a word, how it agitates, distracts, soothes, but generally succeeds best in causing men to stultify themselves, at any rate for a given time.

The evening sped joyously on. Few envied, more rejoiced in the apparent future happiness, and, as it was termed, rare good fortune of the bride elect, whose cheeks maintained a constant rivalry with the rich roses of the fragrant boquet, as time and again some sly inuendo or more open remark reached her ear. Her mother received the more direct congratulations which were lavished upon her, with a quiet ease, in which she endeavored to veil the entire satisfaction which the prospective nuptials afforded her. Thus almost all were pleased. The mother, that her maternal cares were so soon to cease, and the gay pleasure-seekers were satisfied that a new and splendid establishment would in another season be opened to them, and if a feeling of any kind crossed the heart of Laura Bridgeman, that the prize which she once thought within her grasp had fallen to another, she turned to her new admirer, and in the contemplation of his superb mustache forgot, or tried to do so, the vision of the beautiful establishment which had once flitted through her imagination.

Shift we the scene. A few months have passed—the gay festivities of the winter are over—summer now usurps her sway, and nature, decked in her holiday attire, woos to contemplation and quiet enjoyment. The magic words which were to fix for life the destinies of the fair Maria had been spoken; the nuptial benediction pronounced, and in a beautiful villa, a few miles removed from the city, she was passing the first weeks of her bridal life, a loved and loving wife. There are few things in the world more touching than the love of a young, pure wife. The feelings which she entertained for the lover were constrained by a sense of propriety, but now they may pour themselves forth unchecked, in one o’ergushing flood of tenderness. Then she must await his approach, now she may go forth to meet him—then she must check her feelings as they rose, lest, forsooth, she might be thought forward, indelicate. Now she may take the initiative, and her soft hand may push back the locks from the brow on which she may implant a kiss of pure, almost unearthly love. Now she may watch to gratify those little tastes or fancies which then were passed unnoticed.

And never were the gushings of a warm, devoted heart poured forth more tenderly than they were by Maria Dawson for her husband. Nor on his part was the devotion less entire. The villa had been fitted up in every way to gratify her taste and fancy; and between the ride, or the drive, or the wandering about the grounds or in the garden, or music and reading and conversation, the summer passed all too rapidly away, and she almost sighed when the frosts of autumn notified her to prepare to take possession of her luxurious mansion in the city.

Marriage seems to be necessary, as a general rule, to the full development of the characters of women. Circumstances of course have a large share in it, but still it seems almost necessary to the full development of the perfect character of woman that she should be seen in her double position of wife and mother. Germs which have lain dormant are then brought into life; new faculties are called into play; the disposition is fully unfolded, and she exhibits herself frequently in a new and entirely different light from what she was regarded in the days of her girlhood. The timid girl becomes self-reliant; far from being dependent on the views and wishes of those to whom she has been accustomed to look for counsel and guidance, she finds herself called upon to act and decide for others now dependent on her—this gives a vigor to her mind, a firmness to her views, a decision to her actions, which, without some such cause for their development, they would in all probability never have attained.

——