his heart, which bristled with them, like a christening pin-cushion. This, of course, was particularly annoying to her. To forgive and to forget is a Christian virtue, and Saltren, she argued, was no better than a heathen, for all his profession, because he neither forgot nor forgave. When Mrs. Saltren made the announcement to her brother and husband, that a cruel fraud had been committed on her, she had acted without premeditation, stung to the confession by her galled vanity at her brother’s disrespectful tone, and with an indefined, immatured desire of setting herself to rights with her husband. The story had been contemptuously cast back in her face by James Welsh; and it was with some surprise and much satisfaction, that she saw her husband ready to accept it without question. Captain Saltren had not offered to accompany his brother-in-law to the station, which was four miles distant; he could hardly wait with patience his departure. No sooner was Welsh gone, than Saltren grasped his wife’s arm, and said in his deepest tones, “Tell me all, Marianne, tell me all!” “I ought,” said Mrs. Saltren, recovering herself from the confusion which she felt, when her brother ridiculed her story, “I ought at this day to wear a coronet of diamonds. I was loved by a distinguished nobleman, with ardour. I cannot say that I loved him equally; but I was dazzled. His family naturally were strenuously opposed to our union; but, indeed, they knew nothing at all about it. He entreated me to consent to have our union celebrated in private. He undertook to obtain a special licence from the Archbishop. How was I to know that my simplicity was being imposed upon? I was an innocent, confiding girl, ignorant of the world’s deceit; and extraordinarily good-looking.” “And you did not reckon on the wickedness of the aristocracy. Go on.” But Marianne paused. She was not ready to fill up the details, and to complete her narrative without consideration. “Do not keep me in torture!” protested Saltren, his face was twitching convulsively. “How could I help myself?” asked Marianne. “It was not my fault that I had such an exquisite complexion, such abundant beautiful hair, and such lovely eyes; though, heaven knows, little did I know it then, or have I thought of, or valued it since. My beauty is, to some extent, gone now, but not altogether. As for my teeth, Stephen, which were pearls—I had not a decayed one in my jaws then; but after I married you they began to go with worry, and because you did not trust me, and were unkind to me!” “Marianne,” said Saltren, “you deceived me—you deceived me cruelly. You told me nothing of this when I married you.”