Mrs. Dove was the only child of a clergyman who held a small vicarage in the West Riding. Leonard Bacon her father had been left an orphan in early youth. He had some wealthy relations by whose contributions he was placed at an endowed grammar school in the country, and having through their influence gained a scholarship to which his own deserts might have entitled him, they continued to assist him—sparingly enough indeed—at the University, till he succeeded to a fellowship. Leonard was made of Nature's finest clay, and Nature had tempered it with the choicest dews of Heaven. He had a female cousin about three years younger than himself, and in like manner an orphan, equally destitute, but far more forlorn. Man hath a fleece about him which enables him to bear the buffetings of the storm;—but woman when young, and lovely and poor, is as a shorn lamb for which the wind has not been tempered. Leonard's father and Margaret's had been bosom friends. They were subalterns in the same regiment, and being for a long time stationed at Salisbury had become intimate at the house of Mr. Trewbody, a gentleman of one of the oldest families in Wiltshire. Mr. Trewbody had three daughters. Melicent the eldest was a celebrated beauty, and the knowledge of this had not tended to improve a detestable temper. The two youngest Deborah and Margaret, were lively, good-natured, thoughtless, and attractive. They danced with the two Lieutenants, played to them on the spinnet, sung with them and laughed with them,—till this mirthful intercourse became serious, and knowing that it would be impossible to obtain their father's consent they married the men of their hearts without it. Palmer and Bacon were both without fortune, and without any other means of subsistence than their commissions. For four years they were as happy as love could make them; at the end of that time Palmer was seized with an infectious fever. Deborah was then far advanced in pregnancy, and no solicitations could induce Bacon to keep from his friend's bed-side. The disease proved fatal; it communicated to Bacon and his wife, the former only survived his friend ten days, and he and Margaret were then laid in the same grave. They left an only boy of three years old, and in less than a month the widow Palmer was delivered of a daughter.