Reader! I have done. If you are a woman you may smile, and if a man you will sneer; but I assure you there is a moral in the _petite histoire_ of the second wife. Adieu! A STORY WITHOUT A NAME[3] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE. BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. _Continued from page 200._ CHAPTER XXVI. There are seasons in the life of man, as well as in the course of the year; and well, unhappily, have many poets painted them in all their various aspects. But these seasons are subject to variations with different men, as with different years. The summer of one man is all bright and calm--a lapse of tranquil sunshine, and soft airs, and gentle dews. With another, the same season passes in the thunder-storm of passion--the tempests of war or ambition--and often, the gloomy days of autumn or of winter overshadowed the rich land, and spoiled the promised harvest. It was an autumn-like period during the next three or four months of the family of Sir Philip Hastings. For the first time, uncertainty and doubt fell upon the family generally. There had been differences of temper and of character. There had been slight inconveniences. There had been occasional sickness and anxiety. There had been all those things which in the usual course of events diminished the sum of human happiness even to the most happy. But there had been nothing the least like uncertainty of position. There had been no wavering anxiety from day to day as to what the morrow was to bring forth. There had been none of that poison-drop in which the keenest shafts of fate are dipped, "the looking for of evil." Now, every day brought some new intelligence, and some new expectation, and the mass was altogether unfavorable. Had the blow fallen at once--had any one been in power to say, "Sir Philip Hastings, you must resign all your paternal estates, and pay back at once the rents for nearly twenty years--you must give up the rank and station which you have hitherto held, and occupy a totally different position in society!" Sir Philip would have submitted at once, and with less discomfort than most of my readers can imagine. But it was the wearing, irritating, exciting, yet stupefying progress of a lawsuit which had a painful and distressing effect upon his mind. One day, he thought he saw the case quite clearly--could track the tricks of his adversary, and expose the insecure foundation of his claim; and then would come two or three days of doubt and discussion, and then disappointment, and a new turn where every thing had to begin again. But gradually proofs swelled up, first giving some show of justice to the pretence that John Ayliffe had some claim, then amounting to a probability in his favor, then seeming, to unlearned eyes, very powerful as to his right.