Emily Dumont, highly as fortune had favored her in the bestowal of worldly goods and personal beauty, was still more blessed in the gifts of an expansive mind and a gentle heart; and mind and heart had both been faithfully cultivated by the assiduous care of her devoted father. She was a true woman,--not a mere plaything to while away a dandy's idle hours, not a piece of tinsel to adorn the parlor of a nabob, but a true woman,--one fitted by nature and education to adorn all the varied scenes of life. Although brought up in unclouded prosperity, amid luxury and affluence, she was still prepared for the day of adversity, if it should ever come. As the heiress of immense wealth, her hand was eagerly sought in the aristocratic circle around her; but thus far she had resisted all these attacks upon her heart, and upon her prospective riches. In the crowd of suitors who gathered around her was Anthony Maxwell. In the item of wealth his fortune was comparatively small; and in that of a noble character, smaller still. Emily could have forgiven him the want of the former, but the latter was imperatively demanded. At the young lawyer's return from the North, and on his first appearance at the bar, Emily had regarded him with more than ordinary attention. But, after the death of his father, the reports which reached her ears of his dissolute habits and inclinations caused her to regard him with distrust. His wit, accomplishments and native suavity, had procured him admission into the circle of her more favored friends. But the report of his vices had as promptly produced his expulsion.