“Some few years later I married, and accompanied my husband to Europe, and my parents having about the same time removed to the south, I lost sight of Fanny Wilbank. When, however, after some years absence I returned to my native city, one of my first wishes was to learn something of her present condition. But the friends who had promised to employ her, had neglected to do so until it was too late; all trace of her had vanished, and I was left to conjecture her fate. I was one day passing a handsome house in —— street, when I heard a voice from an upper window exclaim ‘Mrs. ——! I am sure it is Mrs. ——!’ I looked up in surprise and beheld Fanny Wilbank. The next moment the hall door opened, and Fanny hurrying down the steps, grasped my hand with the warmth of earnest affection. I followed her into a neatly furnished room, and mechanically seating myself, wondered what it all meant. Fanny divined my thoughts, for she smiled, blushed, and seemed about to tell me some news, when a little chubby boy, of some three summers, twaddled into the room and saluted her by the appellation of ‘mother.’ This solved the whole mystery. “‘Come into the next room, where you will find Mary,’ said Fanny, ‘and I will tell you all about it. For you really did not know that I was married?’ “‘No indeed,’ was my reply, ‘pray how long have you been a wife?’ “‘Almost a year.’ “‘Almost a year?’ I exclaimed in stupid wonder! ‘and that child?’ “‘Is my husband’s youngest boy.’ “‘Then you married to take care of another’s children.’ “‘Yes, I could not refuse him,—fortune had prospered him, so that he could afford to take care of poor Mary, and I consented, though I was almost ashamed to become a bride at my age.’ “‘At your age! why you look younger and prettier than ever, Fanny, in that tasteful little cap.’ “‘Do not laugh at me, dear Mrs. ——, I know it was foolish to marry for love at forty-five, but William was so lonely, and his poor children were so desolate.’ “‘Then it was William Grey you married?’ “‘To be sure;—_did you think it could be any one else?_’ “‘Ah!’ said Mary smiling, ‘William would not have won her even now, if it had not been for his motherless children. Fanny has been so long accustomed to sacrifice her own inclinations, that she cannot be persuaded to any self-indulgence unless some duty be closely connected with it.’ “Fanny Wilbank still lives; the beauty of her noble countenance has faded beneath the touch of time, and many a thread of silver is mingled with her dark locks, yet is she the centre of a circle of loving and beloved friends, still the same, patient, tender, self-forgetting being, that she was in the day of her early adversity.” “So she was at last rewarded, cousin Grace, notwithstanding your assertion to the contrary.”