Fitzroy soon after took his leave, with very different feelings from what he had once anticipated. He blamed himself, but he could not help the chilled state of his heart. Mary was a mortal, after all; she ate cake, drank lemonade, and used her handkerchiefs like other ladies, only she kept them out of sight. Her loveliness, grace, and feminine gentleness of manner no longer entranced him. He departed, and Mary sighed over the dissolving of her first love's dream; but notwithstanding her weakness on this subject, she had a just estimation of herself, and a spirit which, when once roused, guided her to exertions which astonished herself. Her gay cousin, too, departed, and she was thrown upon her own resources. She read much, and reflected more. She blushed for her past weakness, and learned to think with contempt upon the man who had so false an estimate of the true excellence and glory of a woman's character. "Oh," repeated she to herself a hundred times, as, interested in domestic duties, she devoted herself to the comfort of her widowed father, "how miserable I should have been as the wife of a coxcomb, who would desire me to sit all day with folded hands, holding an embroidered handkerchief, with fingers encased in white kid gloves! How could I ever have been so weak and foolish?" Mary generally concluded these reflections with a sigh, for Fitzroy was handsome, graceful, and intellectual, and he was, moreover, the first person who had ever interested her young heart. The following summer she accompanied her father to a fashionable watering-place. She was admired and caressed, but she turned coldly from the gaze of admiration, and cared not for the gayety that surrounded her. While others hurried to the ball-room, she lingered over her book, or indulged in meditations unfamiliar to the lovely and the young. One evening, when she had been unusually dilatory, she heard her father call, and taking a lamp, began to thread the passage, which led through a long suite of apartments occupied by the visiters of the spring. As she passed by one of the rooms, the door of which was partially opened, she heard a faint, moaning sound, and paused to listen. It returned again and again, and she was sure some stranger was suffering there, probably forgotten in the gay crowd that filled the mansion. Her first impulse was to enter, but she shrunk from the thought of intruding herself, a young maiden, into the apartment of a stranger. "My father will go in and see who the sufferer is," cried she, hastening to meet him on the stairs.