We quitted London a few days after the ceremony was performed, and I now had leisure to repent of my weakness and timidity. My introduction to my husband’s family was humiliating and painful to the last degree of suffering sensibility. I was not only an _intruder_, but I was an usurper of the rights I claimed; and I felt that, in my assumed title of _Mrs. Flint_ was contained a reproach, which covered me with confusion every time I heard it pronounced. My only consolation sprang from the resolution of devoting my life to the man, whom I had thus deceived. He was fond of me, and I studied incessantly to make him contented with his wife. I foolishly began to think that I should contribute to the slender stock of domestic comfort which I found at Farefield Hall. Mr. Percival Flint, and his amiable sister Mary appeared to treat me as one destined to enlarge their, and their father’s happiness: even Miss Flint seemed reconciled to the young _mother-in-law_, who had, in no instance abridged her in her authority. I was fond of flowers, and already began to enjoy the amusement of the garden. Mr. Percival one morning entered my dressing room, where Lucretia and myself were at our needle work, my husband having taken his darling Mary with him in his airing; his hands were filled with some rare and beautiful plants, and I found that this was a tribute to my peculiar taste. My thanks followed, and Percival withdrew, in order to see the plants properly disposed of. “You have converted,” observed Miss Flint with a malicious laugh, “our grave and solemn book-worm into a useful being. What a thousand pities it is! that Percival had not seen you before his father:” as the business is now managed he must remain the “despairing shepherd;” for I think the public cruelty prohibits the son-in-law from marrying the mother-in-law, who in many cases might console the poor widow. “My countenance marked how little this levity pleased me.” “Dear me!” pursued she, “you need not look so offended, or be displeased with so harmless a joke; you cannot help Percival’s playing the fool, nor prevent people’s thinking, that the father at seventy is not altogether so handsome as the son at twenty-three or four: you might be tempted to acknowledge this truth yourself were it not for this unlucky relationship; you could not in conscience deny that he is much better qualified to succeed _Mr. Duncan_, than _his father_.”—I heard no more; for yielding to terror and surprise I fainted, and my successive fits alarmed the family; and, as I supposed, moved to pity the cruel insulter, who had brought them on me. She was very assiduous and attentive to me during the few days of my convalescence; and with much humility begged my pardon, saying that she had never entertained the slightest suspicion prejudicial to me; but that having heard of a disappointment of a tender kind, which for a time had injured my health and spirits, she frankly confessed that she had