Several years have passed. We find Althea a matron of twenty or more, but did we not know her age, we might think her five years older. She has not lost her beauty; though it is of a softer, more pensive kind. She is a gentle, quiet woman, beloved by the people of Windsor, for she makes no pretensions, and they have no shadow of suspicion that she deems herself their superior. But it is a never-ceasing wonder to the good and discerning that she ever came to marry Thornton Rush.

Thornton Rush is a man of mark. He has his friends and his foes. To those whom he deems worthy of conciliating, will he fawn and cringe. Those whom he despairs of making his friends, or those whose friendship may do him no good, he alienates determinedly, and without scruple.

For four years has he waged a perpetual warfare with the Captain. The odds would have been against him, had he not in his wife possessed one advantage. While Mrs. Sharp possessed by nature the qualities expressed by her name and made herself unpopular to the good women of Windsor, Althea, without premeditation or effort, was a universal favorite. Thornton Rush was well aware of this advantage, and he made the most of it.

Like many another man, he did not like to come home and find his wife gone. He missed her as he would the sun from day. Althea was much inclined to remain at home; and Thornton would not often have found chance to grumble upon this score. He was not given to habits of self-denial; nevertheless, to secure good will and triumph over Sharp, he would encourage Althea to make frequent visits—nay, often insist upon it, against her inclination and his own private wish. If his wife could serve his policy, well and good. What was a wife for?

There were those who regarded Thornton Rush with positive fear. They quailed beneath the flash of his eye. Such dared not openly oppose him and were outwardly his friends. Some, lacking powers of penetration, deemed him better than he was, and thought there must be much hidden good in one who had won so sweet a woman for a wife. Few dared exhibit, or openly proclaim the intense disaffection with which he had inspired them. But those who did were bitter and unrelenting in animosity; were enemies indeed, worthy of the name. Foremost among these was Carlton Sharp. This Captain still led a company well drilled and faithful. On the other side, Thornton Rush, since about it was no smell of gunpowder, trained a goodly crew, with which he met the Captain's line. Victory was not always upon one side. Politics is a very uncertain res gestoe. And human nature, more uncertain still, would vacillate from wing to wing, now being a Sharp's retainer, and anon a hanger-on of Rush. Such changelings would not count, but that their vote weighs heavily.

Mrs. Lisle had already made one visit to her son, which lasted several months. During this visit Althea's eyes had been opened, and she had been led to wonder, as before in the case of her husband, for what purpose had been assumed the false garb of amiability during the time of her sojourn at Kennons. Both Mrs. Lisle and that strange woman's son were mysteries to Althea. To her mind of singular clearness and purity they were incomprehensible. Their falseness and hardness she was more ready to believe hallucinations of her own mind, rather than really glaring faults of character in them. Hence she strove to force herself to believe them better than they were. But this could not last—and at length the young wife was driven to the sad conclusion that her mother-in-law was not only harsh, unamiable, and unforgiving, but destitute of moral and religious principle, and that the man she had married was worthy such ignoble parentage.

Did Althea then learn to regard her husband with scorn and contempt? Did she become a woman's rights woman and inveigh against man's tyranny and woman's weak submission? Not yet. Althea was motherless, and to all intents fatherless. She had a warm, loving nature, and there were few in this world for her to love. She had given her first love to Thornton, and though she had become aware that it was not the deepest love of which her nature was susceptible she yet clung to him, shutting her eyes to his ill-disguised defects, striving to clothe him with the graces which she had at first supposed him to possess, and, insensibly to himself, refining and purifying by slight degrees his selfish nature.

Then Althea had a pleasant cottage, situated upon a grassy plain, and embosomed in native forest trees. She had her flowers, music, books, her day dreams and hours of inspiration, when she recited to the birds improvisations which might have thrilled or amused a more appreciative audience. Her naturally happy, cheerful disposition caught and reflected but the light, and dispensed warmth and harmony upon all around.

Althea had another grand source of happiness; it was in her one child, Master Johnny Temple, now just passed his third year. With considerable likeness to his father, this child possessed the hereditary beauty of the St. Legers, with that peculiar, queenly poise of the head that had distinguished Della Lisle.

He was then a remarkably beautiful child, with a winning and loving nature. To keep him nicely dressed was one of Althea's sweetest cares; and the little fellow had such a proud air he would have been taken for a royal prince.

Strange would it have been had not Thornton Rush been proud of such a wife and child. But he kept his pride and admiration shut away from their objects. He never took the trouble to tell Althea that she was dear to him, even if he chanced to think so; reversely he had a sullen way of appearing to think his family a trouble and burthen. Had Althea suddenly died some day he would have been shaken into due appreciation; as it was, her presence was like the sunlight that flooded him unconsciously, and to which he was so accustomed he never thought to be grateful for it.

You have seen a little boy with a pet dog. What a life that dog led! Harnessed to carts, sleds, made to draw heavy loads, after his young master, besides jerked this way and that, scolded, kicked, cuffed—what wonder the abused animal ran away or gave up the ghost? Then the boy's grief! His dear, precious only friend that he loved so devotedly! He mourns, sighs, weeps, not dreaming that he has himself done his dog to death. He is lost, having no one to love and torment.

"I will not mind his cross words, his petulance, his spasms of anger," constantly repeated the patient wife, but they entered her soul. "I will disarm him with smiles and pleasant words," she every day resolved; yet every day was she pierced anew with his arrowy verbality. "He shall have to remember me only as a good wife and true," she said mentally, even while her heart was ground as with a heel of iron.

But the time was coming when Althea might not be able thus to fortify herself.

One August morning the family sat at breakfast. It was earlier than usual, for Mr. Rush was to take the boat, which was to convey him the first stages of his journey to his native Thornton Hall. Master Johnny was already up and in his place; for he was a wide-awake fellow, bound never to be left behind.

"Johnny will not eat; he has not been well for several days," remarked the mother anxiously.

"You are always borrowing trouble. It is too early for the child to eat," said the undisturbed father.

"His stomach must be out of order; he threw up yesterday all he ate," continued Althea.

"Because you stuffed him so. You are making a glutton of him. You ought to know he should not eat more than he can hold," replied Thornton, amiable as usual.

The child had put his chubby hands upon the table, and laid upon them his curly head.

"Look up here, sir," said his father, sharply, "what ails you?"

The child raised his head wearily, and looked pleadingly to his mother. She arose, about to take him in her arms, when the father interposed.

"Let him alone. The boy is well enough. You are making a fool of him; he will never amount to a row of pins. I am going to take him in my own hands; he is old enough, and has been babied to death." "Shut up, I tell you," addressing Johnny, who was now crying for his mother to take him. "Yes, a new leaf shall be turned over just so soon as I return from Virginia. And you are about as much of a baby as he is, Althea," whose eyes he observed to be full of tears. "Here, another cup of coffee; you have no thought for me—you give all your attention to that child—there, there is the whistle now! Ten to one I shall be late, and all your fault, forcing me to talk instead of allowing me to eat. Hand me my valise—there, good-by and don't fret," and, rushing away, he gave no kiss to little Johnny, whom he was never more to behold; no kiss to Althea, whom he was indeed to meet again, to meet again and soon; but a gulf between him and her, insurmountable as death itself.

She turned to her child, now that there was no voice commanding, "let him alone." She rocked him in her arms a long time after he had fallen asleep. Her tears sparkled upon his jet curls, while her heart was heavy as lead in her bosom.

"Am I, then, so unlovely that my husband does not care for me? Once I thought it was so beautiful to love, and to be loved! His love is gone; and mine—O my God, let me not lose the last particle of love for the one I must live with until 'death do us part.' We might be so happy, but are so miserable! Is it my fault? My conscience is clear; it does not accuse me. He is so unhappy, so morose; he makes us all so wretched, when life ought to be so pleasant."

Althea had placed her low rocker upon the verandah. A gentle breeze stirred the vines that wreathed the pillars. The birds flew hither and thither upon boughs that shaded her cottage. The fragrance of flowers filled the air.

"How beautiful is all this visible world," exclaimed she. "How full should it be of enjoyment." "Yes, yes," chirped the birds, the breeze and the flowers.

She laid down her child, who still slept heavily. She gazed at him intently, resolutely banishing unwelcome thoughts of aught that should harm him.

The house was in confusion, as it ever is after a hurried departure. Althea busied herself with setting things straight. Then she sat down to her piano, and commenced a song; but her voice trembled too much. She changed into a favorite march, whose notes rose and fell like the storm-tossed billows of the sea. Battles, quadrilles, waltzes dropped from her finger-ends, as if they had been magicians, and so mingled, dislocated and inharmonious, as to make wildest, though still musical confusion.

Hand-weary, but heart-lightened, she took up a book. It was a new book, she had but half-read, "Gates Ajar." She came to the child eating her ginger snaps in Heaven; to the musician playing favorite airs upon the piano, to the dress-maker fashioning gossamer garments out of aerial fabrics, etc., etc. She put by the book.

"I do not like that kind of a Heaven. How could an authoress make a Heaven out of the lowest part of earth? To think of eating, darning and mending up there! We are to do in perfection there, what we most like to do here! The drunkard then will take his glass; but he does not go to Heaven. Wonder if the tobacco chewer enters through the pearly gates—'nothing that defileth or maketh a lie'—ah, how beautiful and charming Heaven must be; more than we can conceive, or she, who looked through 'Gates Ajar,' can imagine. I do not quite like to look through her eyes. I suppose my mother is there. How little I ever think of her—wonder if she watches me from above; O my mother, my mother in Heaven, have pity upon your child!"

A noise from the adjoining room startled her. Had the cat gained entrance to her sleeping child? She went in hurriedly; Johnny was in spasms.

She seized him in her arms, and ran screaming for Mary into the kitchen. Mary ran for the physician, and the distracted mother, still holding the convulsed child in her arms, walked up and down the verandah, shouting for help.

Doctors and neighbors came. All that medical skill and friendly sympathy could suggest was done; but all in vain. When the spasm subsided, the eye was uprolled in unconsciousness, and the face burned with the fiercest fever. Then would come the fearful convulsion, and you would not know the beautiful face so racked and tortured. Again the demon would die out; but reason returned not from his relaxing hold. What a scene was there! All had been set in order a brief while before. Now, again, everywhere was confusion. There lay upon the floor the little cast-off garments. The child had done with them. His rocking-horse stood in the corner, his whip and gun near by, his box of marbles, his countless broken toys and the sled he had never used. The last time he had been to drive with his parents, he had seen that sled inside a store. He insisted upon having it.

"But there is no snow to slide upon," objected his father.

"Johnny no slide—Johnny have 'ittle ocken (oxen) draw sled."

So the sled was purchased, packed into the carriage, and that night little Johnny had wished to sit up all night to admire his treasure.

"These bufully flowers, mamma, see," pointing to the upper surface and sides of the nosegay, facetiously termed. At length sleep overtook him, lying under the table side by side with the gaily-painted sled, one chubby hand grasping the forward rung. The next day the sled had lost its charms, for Johnny was ill; and the next—alas, here was little Johnny! We might speak of Althea's bewildered grief; but why should a mother's hand attempt to write, or a mother desire to read what only a mother's heart can understand, and but imperfectly express?