In a luckless hour, a relation, living in England, from whom Anson had no expectations, died, leaving him a large fortune. This sudden acquisition of wealth enabled him, much to his satisfaction, to quit a profession in which he wanted several requisites for great success. He turned his attention to a science which has since become popular in this country, and became so devoted to its pursuit, that he spent large sums of money in prosecuting it. His wife launched at once into a mode of life which she said her husband’s altered circumstances justified. She plunged deeply into fashionable dissipation, and although Anson seldom accompanied her into the gay circles she frequented, he never objected to her giddy course. His only wish was to see her happy. He was on a visit to an eastern city, collecting materials for a work on his favorite science, at the time I introduced his wife to the reader, and spring advanced before he was ready to bend his steps homeward. He had travelled, as was usual then, by land from New York, and having taken a whole day to perform the journey, it was night when the lumbering mail coach, set Anson down at the door of his house. He had received no answer to the last two letters he had written to his wife, and he feared she was ill. If any one of my readers has been long absent from a happy home, he can understand the trembling eagerness with which the traveller placed his foot upon his door-stone. He pulled at the bell, and its clear sound came back upon his ear, as he stood in breathless anxiety waiting for an answer to the summons. No hasty footstep, however, no opening of inner doors, no audible bustle within, gave token of admittance. Almost convulsively, he grasped again at the handle of the bell, and its startling response pealed through the adjacent dwellings. Slowly a sash creaked up in an adjoining house, and a petulant female voice said,— “There’s no use of your disturbing the neighborhood by ringing there,—nobody lives in that house.” Anson staggered back from the step, and falteringly enquired,— “Has Mrs. Anson removed?” “Removed!” croaked the old woman, “aye, she has removed, far enough from this, I warrant.” “Where has she gone?” gasped the husband.