“Ah! Sophie, but while all the light was shed abroad, the shadow was cast black and thick at home; and how it has darkened our home and your young life, Sophie!” “Some _must_ suffer for others,” said Sophie, abstractedly. “And _have_ you suffered so much, Sophie?” he inquired, sadly. “No!—oh, no!—I was thinking of _your_ suffering, not of my own, and I thought aloud.” While she spoke, Hagar entered from a ride, and brought a letter from Rosalia. When it had been read, and Hagar had left the room to change her riding habit, he said,— “How much that girl—I mean Rosalia, writes like one I know—her very spirit speaks through Rosalia’s pen, as her form is again before me in Rosalia’s person.” “You mean Fanny?” “Yes, I mean Fanny. You have never, until this moment, mentioned her name to me since the night of Rosalia’s arrival, when I angrily forbade your doing so. Often since that I have wished that you might, thus affording me the opportunity of telling you our sad story. I will tell you now, but first, will Hagar be occupied for the next hour?” “Yes, she has gone to her chamber to answer Rosalia’s letter.” “Give me a cordial, Sophie?” She did so, and revived by the stimulant, Withers commenced his story. “I was the only son of my mother, and she a widow, Sophie. She supported and schooled me by her own exertions until I was eighteen years old, when I fell under the notice of the Rev. Lenox May, who received me into his house to read theology with him. Subsequently I entered college, and soon after taking orders, I had the misfortune to lose my mother. She had lived to see the desire of her heart, however—her beloved son in holy orders. She had seen the ceremony of his ordination, heard him preach his first sermon, heard it universally praised as a miracle of eloquence, thoroughly believed it herself, and was ready to exclaim—‘Now let thy servant depart in peace.’ Sophie, I never was intended for a minister of the Gospel. If I have made a tolerable one it is because the hard blows of circumstances have hammered me into shape. Accident and my mother’s wishes made me one. However, soon after my ordination, I was called to the charge of a parish in a village on the Hudson, and the adulation I there received reconciled me to the profession. I was called handsome and eloquent. The church certainly flourished under my ministry. I was flattered by the circumstance _then_; _now_ I know such is ever the case when a young clergyman of tolerable ability is installed in a parish. But, Sophie, I was foster-nursed by the old ladies of the parish, and out of that grew all my sorrows. South of the village, on an eminence overlooking the river, stood the white granite villa of my wealthiest and most important parishioner, General Raymond. He was a widower, with one child—the child of his old age—Fanny, the sole heiress of his property. Religion, or rather, evangelical theology, was his passion. How sonorous rang his full-toned responses through the