To a heart capable of self-sacrifice, there is no feeling so lonely as that which follows exhausted power. No conviction, so keenly painful, as a knowledge that a beloved being, who has cost us the hopes of a life in resigning, can be happy without our aid—that we have nothing to render up—no aim for exertion—nothing to do but sit down and gaze upon the blank which existence has become. Her task was done. The excitement over, and then came to the heart of Malina Gray the toil and pain of concealed suffering; the aching restlessness which eats into the bud of human life. Once more it was rumored that she was ill, and, but for other and more absorbing subjects, Mrs. Gray might have been alarmed for the safety of her child; but she was so intent on other things, that the poor girl and her sufferings remained unheeded at home, save by the gentle Phebe and her betrothed husband. When Mrs. Gray invited our young minister to reside at her house, it was probably with some vague expectation of the result which followed; and when her consent was desired to his union with Phebe, it was given promptly, and with evident satisfaction. But the young divine, though a meek and true Christian, had a dignity of character and opinion which sometimes proved at variance with the exactions of an ambitious and arbitrary matron. She had expected that he would continue to reside in her family, after the marriage, and looked forward to an extended dominion in her own household, and increased influence in the church, to be secured by this arrangement. But when he persisted in establishing an independent home, in managing his own salary, and becoming the sole protector of his future wife, whose state of moral servitude he could not witness without pain, Mrs. Gray’s enthusiasm in favor of the match gradually subsided, and when Malina insisted upon surrendering her newly acquired property to the young couple, and giving them the parsonage for a residence, the haughty woman became stern in her opposition, and while she took every means to render her own house an unpleasant residence for the parties, found some excuse to delay the wedding, from week to week, and at last refused to sanction it, till Mr. Mosier should be regularly installed in the pulpit, which he had now filled almost a year. Still Mrs. Gray was not a woman to talk openly of a change in her opinions. She was too calculating and subtle for useless words.