Maria Wilson was an only child. At an early age she was left to the direction of a mother, whose partiality for her daughter blinded her to all her errors. The best affections of her heart had been neglected, their place had been allowed to be usurped by pride, arrogance, and self-sufficiency. Their means were circumscribed and insufficient to enable her to shine in the gay world, although her beauty was well calculated to attract the admiration of those who moved in it, and her sole ambition seemed to be to gain pre-eminence there, so that when Mr. Worthington, young, handsome, and rich, offered his hand, it was not rejected:—he viewed her faults with the fondness of a lover, and deceived himself into the belief that, once his, he could mould her disposition to whatever he wished it to be; but, after marriage, she launched into the vortex of fashionable life with enthusiasm, regardless of consequences; she was courted and caressed; in vain he entreated, in vain he expostulated; the wish of her heart was gratified; the goblet of happiness, as she thought, was at her lips, and she was determined to quaff it to the dregs; misfortune had not yet taught him to despair, and hope still upheld him; he looked forward to the time when she would become a mother, when the bonds of nature would form a fresh tie with those of affection. But, alas! he was doomed to be disappointed; the little stranger was viewed as an intruder, whose smile was not allowed to meet the mother’s eyes; she mourned that the _fashion was past_ for children to be put out to nurse, and never suffered it to be brought _to her without its face being covered_, that it would not fret for her absence. Every request from her husband to avoid unnecessary expenses, were recorded as evidences of his want of love, or as proofs of a contracted and narrow disposition. She went to the ball,—and, when she returned, her little infant, Adela, lay at the point of death. For the first time, a pang of regret and remorse stung her bosom; repentance caused her tears to flow, as she became a voluntary watcher of its sick bed. Oh! how anxiously did she endeavor to behold one look from those eyes she had so often concealed from hers; she feared they were closed never to be opened again. She sat in silence and despair, endeavoring to catch the sound of that voice whose plaintive wail she had so often despised, but for two days its heavy breathing alone reached her ear.