“Herbert dismissed the greater part of the servants, shut up all except one wing of the large house, sold off the carriage and horses, (reserving only the little pony-carriage, without which he would have been deprived of all means of locomotion,) and restricted his expenses within such narrow limits, that people began to consider him mean and miserly. He withdrew entirely from society, and lived more utterly alone than ever. His books, his pictures, his music, were now his only companions. Yet he did not forget that earth held those to whom even he might minister. The door of the poorest cottages often opened to admit the distorted form of the benefactor and friend, but the sunlight on the rich man’s threshold was never darkened by his shapeless shadow. “Edgar Darsie went to Paris with his beautiful wife, and there he lived in luxury and splendor, surrounded by every thing that could minister to his love of pleasure. Only himself and one other, the lawyer who had drawn up the papers, knew whence his wealth was derived. Even Jessie never suspected that Herbert was living with the closest economy in order that the poor should not suffer from the lavish generosity which had induced him to secure to his brother more than three-fourths of his whole income as a bribe to insure her happiness. “Ten years passed away, dragging their weary length with the lonely and suffering Herbert, winging their way on golden pinions to Edgar, weaving their mingled web of dark and bright to the womanly heart of Jessie. She had witnessed the changes of a fickle nature in her husband—she had learned to endure indifference, and to meet with fitful affection from him—she had borne children, and laid them sorrowing in the bosom of mother earth—she had drunk of the cup of pleasure and found bitterness in its dregs; and now she stood a weeping mourner beside the dying bed of that faithless but still beloved husband. Edgar Darsie had inherited his mother’s disease, together with her beauty. His excesses had hastened the period of its development, and ten years after his marriage he was withering like grass before the hunter’s fire, beneath the touch of consumption. Day after day he faded—his stately form became bowed, his bright face changed, his silken locks fell away from his hollow temples. Health was gone, and beauty soon departed.