overshadowed by a care. From that time we became acquaintances of good Mrs. Martin. She met us in our walks; sometimes took us into her house to give us a piece of seed-cake and a glass of home-made wine; and finally, invited us occasionally to drink tea with her. We enjoyed those evenings exceedingly; she was so kind, and good-natured, and so ready to enter into all our games, in which we had also a blithe comrade in the young man her nephew, who had just returned from sea. He would play with us till we were tired, and then seating us round the blazing fire, would entertain us, Othello-like, with his adventures, and those of his messmates, till we held our breath to listen. A very fine seaman-like youth was Harry Darling the midshipman, and very proud his aunt was of him. In truth she had good cause to rejoice in her affection for him, as the incident we have to relate will prove. When Harry first went to sea, his adopted mother felt, as she expressed it, "very _dissolute_" (desolate?) in her deserted house, and sought refuge from her anxious thoughts by frequenting oftener the tea-tables of her neighbors, among whom her cheerful temper, to say nothing of her comfortable income and hospitality, made her very popular. At the house of one of the most intimate of her gossips, the worthy widow was in the habit of meeting, and of being partner at whist, with a tall gentleman wearing a mustache, and distinguished by the title of "Count." Now, if Mrs. Martin had a weakness, it was her love for "great people," as she phrased it; many of whose privileges were the especial objects of her envy, especially the mournful one of a funeral exhibition of heraldic honors. She always regretted that she had not been able to hang out "a hatchet" for her poor dear departed Mar_ting_. Now, as she never dreamed, dear guileless old body, of any one assuming a dignity not justly appertaining to them, and had no conception of the exact standard of national rank, a foreign count with a mustache like a Life Guardsman was as imposing a personage in her estimation as an ancient English "Thane," and she treated his countship with all possible respect and attention, considering it a high honor when he favored her neat dwelling with a visit, and drank tea out of her best china. She always called him "my lord," and "your lordship," and sympathized deeply in the cruel reverses to which the Revolution had subjected him, never wearying of hearing descriptions of his "cha_too_," and of his hotel in Paris, though it long continued a mystery to her how a nobleman with such a fortune could have liked to keep a _hotel_, a difficulty she had at last solved by ascribing it to foreign manners. But the count became daily more intimate at her house, telling her long stories over the winter fire, or while partaking of the meal she called, in compliment to him, her "petty soupey," and gradually the usual consequences of such story-telling ensued. The unfortunate noble proposed to Mrs.