unequal and unhappy alliances that can only bring a flush to the face in after years. Many a hundred times had it dyed that of Mark Blakely. Before he was twenty he had separated from his wife, when Miss Martha was still a child, and the next six years he traveled on the continent, striving to lose its remembrance. His own family, you may be sure, did not pain him by alluding to it then or after his return. He had no residence in the neighborhood of Bellville. When he visited the town he was the guest of the postmaster, Mr. Hunt. So it happened when Martha met him at his home she never thought of his being a married man. On Mrs. Blakely’s part, she never thought that Martha did not know it. Mark supposed she knew it, and when the thought would flash over him, he would say mentally, “how she must despise me for my mad folly.” He had learned to love her, to love her passionately, never so much as harboring the thought that it could not be reciprocated--he a married man. But this was no less folly than the other had been, and Mark Blakely had the good sense to leave the place. A day or two after he left his mother received a letter from him. Martha was in her dressing-room when she read it. “How strange,” was the comment of Mrs. Blakely. “What do you think, Martha?” she added, lowering her voice. “When he reached Paris there was a note sent to him saying that his wife was dying, and imploring him to come and see her.” “His wife,” cried Martha; “whose wife?” “My son’s; have you forgotten that he had a wife? I wish that we all could really forget it; it has been the blight upon his life.” Martha had discretion enough left in that unhappy moment not to betray that she had been ignorant of the fact. When her burning cheeks had cooled a little, she turned from the window where she had been hiding them and escaped to her own room. The revelation had betrayed to her the secret of her own feelings for Mark Blakely, and in her pride and rectitude she thought that she would die. A day or two more and he was a widower. He suffered some months to elapse and then came to Bellville, his object being to visit Martha Taylor. She believed that he meant to ask her to be his wife, and Martha was not wrong. She could give herself up now to the full joy of loving him. Busy tongues, belonging to some young ladies who could boast more wit than discretion, hinted something of this to Martha. She, being vexed at having her private feelings suspected, spoke slightingly of Mark Blakely. “Did they think that she would stoop to a widower, one who had made himself so notorious by his first marriage?” she asked, and this, word for word, was repeated to Mark Blakely; it was repeated to him by those false friends, and Martha’s haughty manner as she spoke it offensively commented upon. Mark Blakely, believing it fully, judged that he had no chance with Martha, and, without speaking to her of his intentions, he again left. But now no suspicion of this conversation