You may be sure the bachelor was not for any long delay in the matter—that “Happy’s the wooing that’s not long a doing,” was precisely his idea—so he made proposals at once, and was accepted. The evening previous to her marriage, Mrs. Oakly addressed a letter to Mr. Alfred Oakly, informing him of the event, though she entered into no particulars, not even giving the name of her intended husband. All the request she made was, that he would continue to place the same amount of money which he had previously forwarded to her, in some safe deposit, for the benefit of Agatha; that should she survive those whose happiness it was now to do for her, she might not be entirely thrown upon the cold charity of the world. Not one word did she breathe of her yearning for her own precious Louisa; she felt he would not understand her if she did, so she coldly bade him farewell. The marriage was solemnized in the widow’s own little parlor; after which, amid the tears and blessings of the villagers, Mrs. Sullivan departed with her happy husband for his beautiful residence near Lake George. PART II. We will now return to Mr. Alfred Oakly, and learn how the world in the interim has fared with him. Prosperity at the helm, his richly freighted vessels careered over the wide ocean, no devastating fires destroyed his dwellings, no whirlwinds up-rooted his forests, no blight or mildew stole over his fields to nip the golden harvest, and yet, with all this, there was many a beggar who gleaned the refuse from his kitchen, who knew more of happiness than did this cold, selfish man. In the first place his wife had never recovered from the shock to her affections in being forced to yield up her unfortunate child—not only her health but her temper suffered severely. Toward her husband in particular this change seemed pointed, and as much as she had loved him previously her coldness was now proportionate. Unhappily, too, for Louisa, the innocent cause of this rupture, it extended itself even to her, and thus childhood, that rainbow-tinted period of life was to her clouded and joyless. Her father, stern and morose, secluding her from playmates of her own age—her mother seldom greeting her with a word of affection or a smile of encouragement—her caresses met by both with coldness, and all the winning graces of childhood frowned down with disfavor. Her education, however, went on as though her frame were formed of iron. There was a stiff governess, whose cold gray eye was ever on her, to watch that she did not loll in sitting or stoop in walking—that her toes turned out and her elbows turned in—that she neither spoiled her mouth by laughing (little danger!) nor her eyes by crying. Then came the music-master with commands for six hours daily practice for those little fingers—and the dancing-master, saying “_Ma’amselle_, you must be very gay—you cannot never learn de dance ven you do look so vat you call