Carling's first attachment; and it was met by
the same freshness of feeling on the lady's
part. Her lite with her first husband had
not been a happy one. She had made the
fatal mistake of marrying to please her
parents rather than herself, and had repented
it ever afierwards. On her husband's death,
his family had not behaved well to her; and
she had passed her widowhood, with her only
child, a daughter, in the retirement of a small
Scotch town, many miles away from the
home of her married life. After a time, the
little girl's health had begun to fail, and, by
the doctor's advice, she had migrated southward
to the mild climate of Torquay. The
change had proved to be of no avail; and,
rather more than a year ago, the child had
died. The place where her darling was
buried was a sacred place to her, and she had
remained in it ever since. Her position in
the world was now a lonely one. She was
herself an only child; her father and
mother were both dead; and, excepting
cousins, her one near relation left alive was
a maternal uncle living in London.

These particulars were all related, simply
and unaffectedly, before Mr. Carling
ventured on the confession of his attachment.
When he made his proposal of marriage,
Mrs. Duncan received it with an excess of
agitation, which astonished and almost
alarmed the inexperienced clergyman. As
soon as she could speak, she begged with
extraordinary earnestness and anxiety, for a
week to consider her answer; and requested
Mr. Carling not to visit her again on any
account, until the week had expired. The
next morning she and her maid departed for
London. They did not return until the week
for consideration had expired. On the eighth
day Mr. Carling called again, and was
accepted.

The proposal to make the marriage as
private as possible came from the lady. She
had been to London to consult her uncle
(whose health, she regretted to say, would
not allow him to travel to Cornwall to give
his niece away at the altar); and he agreed
with Mrs. Duncan that the wedding could
not be too private and unpretending. If it
was made public, the family of her first
husband would expect cards to be sent to
them, and a renewal of intercourse, which
would be painful on both sides, might be
the consequence. Other friends in Scotland,
again, would resent her marrying a second
time, at her age; and would distress her
and annoy her future husband in many
ways. She was anxious to break altogether
with her past existence; and to begin a new
and happier life, untrammeled by any
connection with former times and troubles.
She urged these points, as she had received
the offer of marriage, with an agitation which
was almost painful to see. This peculiarity
in her conduct, however, which might have
irritated some men, and rendered others
distrustful, had no unfavourable effect on Mr.
Carling. He set it down to an excess of
sensitiveness and delicacy which charmed
him. He was himself—though he never
would confess it—a shy, nervous man by
nature. Ostentation of any sort was
something which he shrank from instinctively,even
in the simplest affairs of daily life; and his
future wife's proposal to avoid all the usual
ceremony and publicity of a wedding, was
more than agreeable to him,—it was a positive
relief. The courtship was accordingly
kept secret at Torquay, and the marriage
was celebrated privately at Penliddy. It
found its way into the local newspaper as a
matter of course; but it was not, as usual
in such cases, also advertised in the Times.
Both husband and wife were equally happy
in the enjoyment of their new life, and
equally unsocial in taking no measures
whatever to publish it to others.

Such was the story of the rector's
marriage. Socially, Mr. Carling's position was
but little affected, either way, by the change
in his life. As a bachelor, his circle of friends
had been a small one; and, when he married,
he made no attempt to enlarge it. He had
never been popular with the inhabitants of
his parish, generally. Essentially a weak
man, he was, like other weak men, only
capable of asserting himself positively, in
serious matters, by running into extremes.
As a consequence of this moral defect, he
presented some singular anomalies in
character. In the ordinary affairs of life he was
the gentlest and most yielding of men; but
in all that related to strictness of religious
principle, he was the sternest and the most
aggressive of fanatics. In the pulpit, he was
a preacher of merciless sermons; an interpreter
of the Bible, by the letter rather than by
the spirit, as pitiless and as gloomy as one of
the Puritans of old—while, on the other
hand, by his own fireside, he was considerate,
forbearing and humble almost to a fault. As
a necessary result of this singular inconsistency
of character, he was feared, and sometimes
even disliked, by the members of his
congregation who only knew him as their
pastor; and he was prized and loved by the
small circle of friends who also knew him as
a man. These friends gathered round him
more closely and more affectionately than
ever after his marriage—not on his own
account only, but influenced also by the
attractions that they found in the society of his
wife. Her refinement and gentleness of
manner; her extraordinary accomplishments
as a musician; her unvarying sweetness of
temper, and her quick, winning, womanly
intelligence in conversation charmed every
one who approached her. She was quoted
as a model wife and woman by all her
husband's friends; and she amply deserved the
character that they gave her. Although no
children came to cheer it, a happier and a
more admirable married life has seldom been