Such was the evening on which Edward Cunningham conducted his fair bride into the mansion prepared for her reception. But had both earth and heaven been decked with ten-fold splendor, their beauty and magnificence would have been lost on him; for his thoughts, his affections, his whole being were centered in the graceful creature that leaned on his arm, and whom he again and again welcomed to her new abode—her future home. He forgot that he still moved in a world that was groaning under the pressure of unnumbered evils; forgot that earthly joy is oft-times but a dream, a fantasy, that vanishes like the shadow of a summer cloud, that flits across the landscape, or, as the morning vapor before the rising sun; forgot that all on this side heaven, is fleeting, and changeable, and false. In his bride, the object of his fondest love, he felt that he possessed a treasure whose smile would be unclouded sunshine to his soul; whose society would make another Eden bloom for him. It was but six short months since he first saw her who was now his wife; and for nearly that entire period he had been in ‘the delirium of love,’ intent only on securing her as his own. He had attained his object, and life seemed spread before him, a paradise of delight, blooming with roses, unaccompanied by thorns. Joy and sorrow, in this world, dwell side by side. In a stately mansion, two doors only from the one that had just received the joyful bridegroom and happy bride, dwelt one who had been four weeks a wife. On that same bright evening she was sitting in the solitude of her richly furnished chamber, her elbows resting on a table, her hands supporting her head, while a letter lay spread before her, on which her eyes, blinded by tears, were rivetted. The letter was from her husband. He had been from home nearly three weeks, in which time she had heard from him but once, and then only by a brief verbal message. The letter that lay before her had just arrived; it was the first she had ever received from her husband, and ran thus:— _Mrs. Westbury_—Thinking you might possibly expect to see me at home this week, I write to inform you that business will detain me in New York some time longer. Yours, &c. FREDERIC WESTBURY.