Edda was, indeed, a spoiled pet, full of caprice and whim, beautiful and graceful as a fairy, and as untamed and uncontrollable as an unwedded Undine. But, poor child, marriage brought no happy spirit to dwell in her household. How could it? For they had married under the influence of the maddest, wildest infatuation. Their love was beautiful while it lasted; but soon the husband grew exacting, the angel became a mere woman, and the darling, who had never obeyed any will but her own, discovered she had a lord and master, whose will was stronger and more unbending than even her own had ever been. Then Edda was extravagant and thriftless, and thoughtless, a real child-wife, like poor Dora, that English Undine creation of Dickens’s fancy, but with more spirit and temper than “Little Blossom.” Edda’s character had in it qualities which would have made her a fine woman, properly and gradually developed; but her husband placed her on the scale of his own model of perfection, and endeavored to drag her up to this idea of wifehood, without waiting for Nature to assist him. It was the old, sad story told over again—incompatibility of tempers, unreasonableness on his part, petulance, waywardness and temper on hers. God sent them a little babe, but the child brought no tenderness to the heart of either parent for each other. Then trouble came upon Ralph Murray in his business—unfortunate speculations, bad failures in others he had trusted; but instead of going to his wife, and talking affectionately, but candidly, remembering all the while what a spoiled darling she had been, he considered himself aggrieved by her lavish expenditure, and told her haughtily that she was now the wife of a young merchant, and not the niece of a rich man, and ought to have sense enough to observe economy. Poor Edda was offended, bitter words passed between them, and they parted in anger. Her aunt found her in tears—happening to come in just as the irritated husband had left her. Edda turned to her thoughtless, childish aunt, for comfort, telling her the whole story of her wrongs; and Mrs. Martin pronounced Mr. Murray a brute, to treat her poor child so unkindly. Mr. Martin thought always as his wife did, and in the first flush of temper, they carried the weeping, angry wife, with her young babe, away from her husband’s roof; the exasperated uncle leaving for Mr. Murray an angrily worded note, in which he said that Edda had never ceased to be his niece, even if she had been so unfortunate as to become the wife of a parsimonious merchant, and an unkind husband. The following day Ralph Murray was a bankrupt.