The wedding ceremony over, Mr. Westbury immediately took his bride to his elegantly furnished house; threw it open for a week, to receive bridal visits; and then gladly obeyed a summons to New York, to attend to some affairs of importance. On leaving home, he felt as if released from bondage. A sense of propriety had constrained him to pay some little attention to his bride, and to receive the congratulations of his friends with an air of satisfaction, at least; while those very congratulations congealed his heart, by bringing to mind the ties he had formed with one he could not love, to the impossibility of his forming them with the one whom he idolized. When he had been absent about ten days, {415} he availed himself of an opportunity to send a verbal message to his wife, informing her that he was well, and should probably be at home in the course of two weeks; but when that period was drawing toward a close, his business was not completed, and as home was the last place he wished to visit, he resolved to protract his absence, so long as he had a reasonable excuse. “I must write, and inform her of the change in my plan,” thought he, “decency demands it, yet how can I write? My dear Julia!—my dear wife! No such thing—she is not dear to me! ‘Ce cœur au moins, difficile à domter, Ne peut aimer ni par ordre d'un père, Ni par raison.’ She is my wife—she is Mrs. Westbury—she is mistress of my house, and must share my fortune—let that suffice her! It must have been for these that she married me. A name! a fortune! an elegant establishment! Mean! ambitious! heartless! Thou, Maria—bright, beautiful, and tender—thou wouldest have married me for myself! Alas, I am undone! O, my father!” Under the influence of feelings like these, he wrote the laconic epistle which cost his bride so many bitter tears.