The brokers parted. It was a time to make the stoutest heart quail. The commercial world was then going through one of those dreadful convulsions which so frequently happen to it, aggravated on this occasion by the most reckless, improvident and profligate expansion of the paper currency known for a century. The consequence was, that the fury of the storm fell upon the heads not of a portion only of the community, but upon the whole. Persons dependent upon the incomes arising from stock investments were suddenly cut off; and all classes, from the laborer deprived of the work which afforded him his daily pittance for the support of his family, upward, felt the blow. Stocks were tumbling down at from one to five per cent. a day; money was not to be had on securities which in ordinary times would have been more than ample, and universal distrust and dismay abounded. How fared it in all this commotion with the personages of our story? They had been several years wedded, and heaven seemed to smile most benignantly on their union. Three lovely children were grouped around them. Every comfort, every luxury that wealth could procure were lavished by Henry Dawson on his young wife, whose loveliness appeared, in his eyes at least, to increase with each succeeding year. The girlish beauty had passed away, but the matronly grace and elegance and beauty which had succeeded, were only as yet the first full developments of the lovely bud of promise. Nothing had however occurred to test in any way the young mother’s character, and except when occupied with the young family in the nursery at home, she was to all outward appearance the polished, elegant woman of the world, one of fortune’s spoiled children. The richer qualities of head and heart, if indeed she possessed any, had never yet seen the light. Her husband was proud of her in every way--proud of the fine mind which her rich conversational powers showed; proud of the faultless taste which governed all the arrangements of her drawing-rooms and her a own personal appearance--but beyond these he knew nothing of her--nor perhaps did she of herself. The world flocked in crowds to her splendid balls, and gave her the tribute of admiration which her personal graces and loveliness demanded as their right. But this was all that the husband of her choice or the world in which she dwelt knew of Maria Dawson. Her full character was not yet developed, the circumstances had not arisen.