“Not only for you—not only for you—but for _humanity_, dearest Mark, I wish you to attain power and place. You will attain them, and——_I shall not die till then_!” she would mentally add. At the end of the fourth year of their residence in Shelton, Rosalie having attained her majority, it became necessary for Mark Sutherland to go to Mississippi—to Cashmere—on the part of his wife, for the purpose of making a final settlement with her guardian, Clement Sutherland, and taking possession of her splendid fortune. He wished very much that Rosalie should accompany him to the South; but as the necessity of her personal attendance might be dispensed with, and as at home the interests of their household, their school, and the paper, seemed to require the presence of one of them, it was decided that Mark Sutherland should depart on his journey alone. It was on a cool, pleasant day of September that Judge Sutherland set out on his journey for the South. Rosalie had accompanied him on board the boat, to remain as long as she might before the steamer should leave the wharf. It was their first separation since their marriage, and upon that account alone, perhaps, they felt it the more sensibly; and as the boat was getting up her steam, Mark Sutherland blessed and dismissed his wife. He felt—how wan, how fragile, how spiritual was her appearance; he almost felt that at any moment she might be wafted from his possession, from his sight, for ever. The idea transfixed him with a sharp agony, but only for a little while. The boat was on her way, and his thoughts turned from her he was leaving behind to those he was hastening to meet. This way, too, was full of anxiety. Nearly a year had passed since he had heard from any of his friends in Mississippi. Although he had written to his mother regularly, he had received no letter from her for several months, and the vague reports from Silentshades were not satisfactory. Six weeks had intervened since his wife had attained her majority, and they had advised Mr. Clement Sutherland to be prepared to give an account of and yield up the property left in his care for so many years; yet no answer had been vouchsafed. Rumour also spoke of Clement Sutherland as a suspected, if not a ruined man. Full of anxiety as to the truth of these injurious rumours and the causes of this ominous silence, Mark Sutherland paced the deck of the steamer as it pursued its course down the river.