could not speak to her, but he pointed to the
study-door. He saw her go into the room;
and then he left the house.

He never entered it more; and he and his
wife never met again.

Later on that last day, a sister of Mr.
Carling's—a married woman living in the town
—came to the rectory weeping bitterly. She
brought an open note with her, addressed
to the unhappy mistress of the house. It
contained these few lines, blotted and stained
with tears:—

May God grant us both the time for repentance!
If I had loved you less, I might have trusted
myself to see you again. Forgive me, and pity me,
and remember me in your prayers, as I shall forgive
and pity and remember you!

He had tried to write more; but the pen
had dropped from his hand. His sister's
entreaties had not moved him. After giving
her the note to deliver, he had solemnly
charged her to be gentle in communicating
the tidings that she bore, and had departed
alone for London. He heard all
remonstrances with patience. He did not deny
that the one deception of which his wife had
been guilty (subsequent inquiry proved that
she had deceived him in nothing else, and
that her first husband had died little more
than six months after her divorce), was the
most pardonable of all concealments of the
truth, because it sprang from her love for
him. But he had the same hopeless answer
for everyone who tried to plead with him
—the verse from the Gospel of Saint Luke.

His purpose in travelling to London was
to make the necessary arrangements for his
wife's future existence, and then to get
employment which would separate him from
his home and from all its associations. A
missionary expedition to one of the Pacific
Islands, accepted him as a volunteer. Broken
in body and spirit, his last look at England,
from the deck of the ship, was his last
look at land. A fortnight afterwards, his
brethren read the burial service over him
on a calm, cloudless evening at sea. Before
he was committed to the deep, his little
pocket-bible, which had been a present from
his wife, was, in accordance with his dying
wishes, placed open on his breast, so that
the inscription, " To my dear Husband,"
might rest over his heart.

I need say but little more. You have seen
and spoken to the poor creature who was
once his wife. When she was first placed
under my care, I thought her case hopeless.
The mental malady, after she had been with
me little more than a mouth, was complicated
by physical malady—by fever on the
brain. To my surprise, and to the surprise of
my professional brethren whom I called
into help me, she lived through it; and she
recovered, with the complete loss of one
faculty—which, in her situation, poor thing,
is a mercy and a gain to her—I mean, the
utter loss of memory. She has not the
faintest gleam of recollection of anything
that happened before her illness; and, in
that happy oblivion, she lives contentedly the
life of a child. The veriest trifles are as
new and as interesting to her, as they are
to your young children or to mine. So far
as any necessity for restraint is concerned
she might leave my care to-morrow. But her
friends know that my wife has grown to
love her, as well as to pity her; and that
my children would feel it to be a cruel loss if
their poor grown playmate was taken away
from them. I hope she will be left to live in
their society, and to die with nothing on her
memory but the recollection of their kindness.

NEW TOYS.

IN the afternoon of the first of January,
eighteen hundred and fifty-eight, Matilda
sat on the floor of the drawing-room, nursing
a wooden doll, which successive acts of
violence had bereft entirely of its hair and of
its habiliments, partially of its features;
Augustus (smaller than Matilda) was close
by her side, wheeling backwards and
forwards the body of a toy-horse, whose
coal-black colour was varied by spots resembling
white wafers; the head of the noble animal,
which had long been detached from the
trunk, served as a separate plaything for
Arthur (smaller than Augustus), who now
put it in his mouth, sucking off the paint
with infinite relish, now amused himself
with pulling bits from the fluffy mane, and
sending them afloat through the air by the
force of his infant breath.

The sound of a carriage was heard, and the
three children, running to the window, saw a
vehicle, from which alighted an old gentleman,
who, according to all appearance, was
the most perfect compound of health, wealth,
and benevolent wisdom; the very person
who, if he had been in the habit of going
to bed early, and rising betimes, would
have been selected by all admirers of a
certain time-honoured proverb, as affording
a visible proof of its soundness. We may
remark, however, that as the old gentleman
always sat up after midnight, and always
breakfasted in bed, he could not have
answered this valuable purpose. When he
had alighted, he spoke a few words to the
servant, who, with the help of the old gentleman's
footman, drew from the carriage a
large brown-paper parcel, and bore it solemnly
into the house.

After the lapse of a minute, the arrival of
the healthful visitor was duly announced by
the servant, now empty-handed, and
presently the visitor himself appeared at the
drawing-room, with the large parcel under
his own arm.