Another four years passed away! The whirlwind which wrecked many a tall commercial house, and strangled many a long accumulated fortune, had passed over Philadelphia, carrying dismay, desolation and anguish. The firm of which Mr. Laverty was the head, bent, but did not break. Confidence in him was not impaired, for he was an unexceptionable business man; but it was well known that he had sacrificed more than half his fortune to secure the remainder.

And who that visited, during the summer of 1837, the various fashionable watering-places, does not remember that pale girl, who, attended by a doating father, sought a restoration of impaired health. Amy was lovely still; true, the sunny smile was gone—but, in the place of that garish splendor of radiance, which was wont “to burn like the mines of sulphur,” there remained the calm and dreamy beauty of the moonlighted sky. The rose had fled her cheek, but the lily, in all its purity, shone from her Parian brow. She had felt, at last, that she possessed a heart. She was no longer “a lump of ice in the clear, cold morn.” But her heart was an unwritten scroll, upon which none of late dared attempt to inscribe the word “love.” Many admired, some adored,—but her name had gone forth, as of a heartless coquette. To win her love, would have been ineffably sweet; but, like the French gallant, no one thought it reasonable to thrust his head into a hive in search of the honey!

“Amy Laverty looks better, to-night, and begins to beam radiantly again, Walton,” said a gay lounger, to his friend.

“Yes,” was the reply, “chaste as the icicle, and every whit as cold! Like the henchman of Harold the Dauntless, she has, or had, the faculty of chilling all who ventured within her influence!”

“Oh! you speak feelingly,” laughed Withers, “for I remember, now, that she had you ‘within her influence,’ some years since, when you held a clerk-ship at Washington; and then she placed her icy fingers on you! A frozen child dreads the frost, I perceive, as much as a burned child does the fire!”

“Rail away, Tom! With honest Grumio, ‘I confess the cupe!’” replied our old friend Stanton, who, at the Jackson Inaugural Ball, had been the subject of Pennant’s remarks to Amy, during the flirtations of the dance. “The undeniable fact is, I was jilted.” In those few words are embodied the history of Amy’s life. “Van Buren never had so many applications for office, since he was inaugurated, in March last, as she has had proposals, and the disappointed applicants have been about as numerous under one administration as the other. I was deeply, desperately, madly in love with her, but she cured me—chilled me off!”

“Has she a heart, think you, Stanton?” continued Withers, with mock solemnity. “I have read of a French surgeon, who dissected a man, and found him without that organ. Do you not think that ‘the Laverty’ might be coupled with him, in this Noah’s ark of a world, as the two of a kind?”

“Nay, hardly as bad as that! Amy has been thoughtless, ambitious, and possessed of the pride of Lucifer—like him, she is a fallen angel; fallen from the effects of that pride, but I sincerely believe she has been humbled in a measure—that she has a heart, and that it has been touched. I have seen much of her; for my dismissal as her lover, never interrupted our friendly relations; and she has been an altered woman ever since Frank Pennant married Kate Stanton;—but the change came too late, and she now stands a fair chance to “lead apes,” for I know not the man who would venture to address her! The days of your Petrucios and Duke Aranzas are past, and live but in the drama. And so she attained the reputation of a coquette, and therefore—”

“Yes, I understand,” interrupted Withers; “but see, yonder goes Mr. Stanton, another of her discarded ones. I am told she passed some bitter slight on him.”

“Yes, she made no secret of her scorn at the humble lot of his parents. But she little knew the brilliant career which destiny and perseverance had marked out for him. Henry Stanton goes to Congress this winter; and no man of his age was ever elected under such brilliant auguries of success. He has never married, and I have reason to believe that her conduct has had a marked influence upon his whole past life.”

“How so?”

“Shortly after his rejection by her his father died. A frugal life had done as much as all the stock speculations at the Exchange could have effected, and he was found to be extremely rich—a round hundred thousand at the least. Stanton could have lived in ease and independence; but his honorable pride was stung, and he seemed determined to win his way to eminence, that the proud beauty might see that mind, not money, was the true standard of nature’s nobility.”

“And do they ever meet now?”

“Oh, yes—as cold friends. I have sometimes thought—and were it any other man than Henry Stanton, I should be certain—that he loves her still. I have watched him gaze upon her, when he thought himself unobserved, and having known myself what it was to feel an unrequited passion, have been almost convinced that the old flame was only smothered or concealed, but not burned out.”

This conversation details what “the world” thought upon the persons in whose fate our story is interested. And how was it with Amy Laverty? Was the proud, imperious beauty brought to feel the nothingness of pride when it would shut out from the heart the pleadings of youth, talent, and high chivalric honor? Had a miracle been wrought? It had, indeed; she would now have exchanged the world’s wealth for the love of Henry Stanton. She had watched his brilliant career, at first with indifference, but at length the thought would intrude itself, that he, upon whose eloquence admiring listeners hung enraptured; whose fame was ringing through the land, and whose smile was courted by all, might have been hers. At such times the monitor within would say, what a noble pride it would have been to call such a man all her own. By almost imperceptible degrees the imperious girl was changed to an humbled and deep-loving woman.

This change of feeling, from one extreme to the other most opposite, is a curious constitution of human nature. It is only in the mysterious workings of Providence, and its various applications for the benefit of mankind, that we can trace the solution of this apparent paradox, that actions or feelings frequently produce effects the very reverse of those which we would have expected. Thus joyous sensations often leave a tinge of pain, and sorrows bring a cordial balm to the afflicted heart. Tell the mother, who weeps the ruin of her hopes and joys over the grave of a darling child, that her offspring is now reaping the fruits of an innocent life in a world of never-ending bliss, and her rising sobs will show that these consoling reflections strongly augment her grief. The angry man is more deeply incensed at every mark of favor, and the conduct of the lover assures us, that “fears and sorrows fan the fire of joy.”

The influence of this converted passion, if the term may be allowed, is co-existent with all our thoughts and actions, and occurs when the mind is occupied by some powerful feeling, whose commanding influence seems to subdue every inferior emotion. The patriot forgets individual wrongs in his love of country; the soldier knows not fear, anxiety, or hope, when the “big war” makes “ambition virtue.” Even religion itself is not uninfluenced by this principle. The apostles, we are told, when confined in the prisons of Thyatira, sang praises unto God at midnight; as if the darkness and gloom of their dungeon, and the aggravating circumstances of their confinement, heightened the triumph of their devotion, and enabled them, notwithstanding the fearful earthquake which shook the foundations of their prison, to conduct with moderation and fortitude. The flames of persecution, while consuming the bodies of suffering martyrs, seem to have given new energy to the pious emotions of their minds, and enabled the fervency of their devotions to rise superior to every external object. The design of such a constitution of our nature is easily seen; it is thus the powers of the human mind are made to correspond with the occasion on which they are excited. It is a principle salutary in its effects upon ourselves, and illustrative of His character who has established all things in benevolence and wisdom.

Thus we may see how the chastening hand can convert the proudest scorn to the timidity of love, feeling itself hopelessly unrequited; and by tracing the arcana of the heart’s mysteries, discover how natural was the process, or rather the retribution, which turned the pride of Amy, and made her recoil from the contemplation of her former self.

——