It is summer. The courts are closed, and all who can are escaping from the city's heat to the cool, refreshing shades of the country. Woe to those who remain! The pestilence has stretched her wings over them. The shadow and the silence of death has fallen on their deserted streets. The yellow-fever is in New-York--introduced, it is said, by ships from the West Indies. Before it appeared Edward Houstoun was far away. He was travelling to recruit his exhausted powers--to Niagara, perhaps into Canada, and in the then slow progress of news he was little likely to be recalled by any intelligence from the city. His mother was one of the first who had sickened. And where were now the fair forms that had encircled her in health--where the servants who had administered with obsequious attention to her lightest wish? All had fled, for no gratified vanity--no low cupidity can give courage for attendance on the bed of one in whose breath death is supposed to lurk. The devotedness of love, the self-sacrifice of Christian Charity, are the only impulses for such a deed. Yet over the sufferer is bending one whose form in its perfect development has richly fulfilled its early promise, and whose face is more beautiful in the gentle strength and thoughtfulness of womanhood than it had been in all its early brightness. In her peaceful home, where the reverent love of her young pupils and the confidence of their parents had made her happy, Lucy had heard from one of Lady Houstoun's terrified domestics of the condition in which she had been left, and few hours sufficed to bring her to her side. Days and nights of the most assiduous watchfulness, cheered by no companionship, followed, and then the physician, as he stood beside his patient and marked her regular breathing, her placid sleep, and the moisture on her brow, whispered, "You have saved her." We will not linger to describe the emotion with which Lady Houstoun, awakening from this long and tranquil slumber, exhausted, but no longer delirious, first recognised her nurse. At first, no doubt, painful recollections were aroused, but with the feebleness of childhood had returned much of its gentleness and susceptibility, and Lucy was at once so tender and so cheerful, that very soon her ministerings were received with unalloyed pleasure. Sickness is a heavenly teacher to those who will open their hearts to her. Lady Houstoun arose to a new life. She had stood so near to death that she seemed to have looked upon earth in the light of eternity. In that light, rank and title, with all their lofty associations and splendid accompaniments, faded away, while true nobleness, the nobleness which dwells in the Christian precept "Love your enemies--do good to those that despitefully use you," stood out in all its beauty and excellence.