his subsistence, he found, with the increasing call, a very much diminished facility in answering it.

Added to this, he was not of a strong constitution. The excitement which a man with sensibility so excessive as his had during the last several months gone through, could not but tell on a frame so finely and delicately constructed. During the few months of entire happiness he had enjoyed immediately after his marriage, he had been gaining every day fresh accessions of vigour both of body and mind; but the reverses that had too soon followed, had undone much of this.

I need not tell you, that Armand Du Chastel was a prey to none of those irritating, provoking feelings which attend upon the money disappointments of a covetous man; but he was far-seeing, and imaginative, and his mind, more vividly, perhaps, than that of another, painted both the advantages of easy circumstances and the horrors of penury. His narrow means scarcely merited the name of penury so long as he was single; but now the idea of his embarrassments would make him tremble.

He was necessarily very much alone and his employment one which exhausts the spirits and inclines to melancholy and faint-heartedness, whilst it unfortunately affords plenty of time I will not say for the indulgence of, for there was no such indulgence here, but for the attacks to be repeated. Then he no longer lodged at his workshop. There was a fatiguing walk to be taken morning and evening; there was no cheerful, loving wife hard by to step in between the intervals of labour, and brighten up the many hours of anxious exertion. Added to this, there were long fasts, injuriously long. Evelyn, when aware of this evil, had provided a sandwich box, which was completely filled every morning, whoever else was served or not. She had herself visited his lodgings in C-- Street, and deposited half-a-dozen of the best wine she could procure in a little cupboard, with glasses, &c., and had given him positive orders to take some every day

but to what avail?

She was not there to press the little meal upon his failing appetite; she was not there with kind importunity to force the glass of wine upon him.

He did not care for food - he was not in a humour to feel the want of it. At last, to his other anxieties, was added that most horrible of all in his case

fear that his own health was giving way.

the

It was not till the second winter was half over, however, that Armand had felt the full force of the anxieties here described. The little money which after everything had been sold had remained, the rent of the house, and the additional advantage of being, in matters of dress, and various other things, amply provided, had prevented much pressure for some time; and while pressure was not urgent, hope was ready to flatter him with the expectation that professional matters would mend before real necessity could arrive.

But this, as I have said, did not prove to be the case; and as the winter advanced, things began to look

very serious.

Now Evelyn had need for all her courage.

found what most women will find

She

that when the difficulties and sorrows of life begin, they must not expect to receive support from the being, a mortal like themselves, from whom, in the fond fool's paradise of love, they fancied an almost Godlike power was indwelling to protect and shield from every danger and sorrow. They will discover, that as they fly to him for comfort, so will he come to them. That this god, this proud, strong, manly being - is a feeble child of clay, with trembling nerves, failing spirits, uncertain views, delusive hopes, and anxious fears; that he has to be soothed, and strengthened, and calmed, by the gentle influences of that other heart, whose strength is in its love. Love of the faithful wife, or young mother, which is bolder than the lion, and deeper than the grave.

She used to walk up and down that causeway in front of the long dull row of houses, with their monotonous little slips of gardens and blanched, leafless trees, carrying her baby in her arms, warmly covered up, and pressed closely to her heart. There was no one else to give it air.

Every servant that could possibly be spared had been discharged, and the young woman who officiated as nurse-maid had rooms to clean and sundry other things to do, so that she had no time for exercise.

There was something soothing in these monotonous walks, with the little breathing being softly slumbering on her bosom, which disposed and gave her opportunity for quiet thought and reflection. Much did her everactive mind speculate upon the world, the circumstances and relations of mankind, and upon the object of that great lesson which her own experience taught her to believe it was the purpose of this life to teach.

Her own history, brief as it had been, was full of moral incident. The changes in her outward circumstances had been very great, but those in the inner life were far, far greater.

Every hope, view, purpose sorrow, was altogether different.

every joy and every

It is rare, that so complete an alteration in the course of life happens to any one; for few pass so many years as Evelyn had done in the enjoyment of almost unbounded affluence, and few, even among the perpetual alternations of our eventful social system, sink so low as she has done now.

Many of these solitary hours, however, were spent in the mere penny-and-pound calculations of domestic economy. How, at least cost to the general purse, to provide first necessaries, and then little comforts and luxuries, for the hard-taxed father and husband, and the suffering, melancholy mother, was a problem difficult to solve. Still, much of reflection was, as I have said, engaged in things of higher import - in meditations from which the heart gains fresh power, and grows purer and better. Some of these thoughts, and every day more and more, travelled to her father.

The little one nestling at her breast admonished her; and she began to view, in a light she had never done before, her conduct as a daughter. The consciousness of her faults made her feel how bitter it must be to find a harsh and severe judge of our infirmities in our own child; and she recollected, with horror, the arrogance with which she had dared to sit in judgment upon a parent. Not as an indulgent, partial, reverencing judge - such as a child, if presuming to be a judge at all, should be but as the most severe and unsparing of censors! and her heart yearned for reconciliation.

Yearned to cast herself at his feet - acknowledge her own violence and want of respect, and implore his blessing, and his forgiveness for all the many, many occasions when she had suffered that ungovernable tongue of hers to overstep the limits of respect and duty.

She wished her father to bless her, and, through her, this child. Armand had contented himself, upon his return home, with explaining that the purpose of his journey had been to ascertain the truth as regarded the settlement, and that its result had been a failure.

He passed as slightly as he could over the interview with Mr. Marston; but the little that was told sufficed to convince Evelyn that much had been kept back, and that reconciliation at present was not to be hoped for.