was a void in her bosom which society could not fill up. To love, from the moment Dudley had quitted her, Alicia's heart had been as "a sealed fountain:" the days of romance were over, and she could now read of the successes of her early lover in that land where his bravery had achieved the highest honours, without those strong emotions by which such perusals had used to shake her soul. In the place of the hope which, almost unacknowledged to herself, had for years lingered in the heart of Alicia, that the lover would, despite her coldness, still return and renew his suit, (a hope that had shut out all chance to other suitors) she now felt a softened regard, a hallowed feeling of remembrance, that she would not have exchanged for the adoration of the whole world. But the world had now ceased to charm; and Alicia sought, in mental resources, the companionship she had before found in society. Happy are those unmarried females who, when the sunny noon of womanhood begins to fade, and the twilight shadows of existence come stealing gently on;—who, when their glass becomes a monitor, though voiceless, that impresses unflattering truths—and they sit disengaged in the ballroom, and hear the whispered word "passèe" from some newly-fledged debûtante, vain and ephemeral as the insect she resembles ;-happy, we say, are those, whose mental resources can make them look with cheerfulness on the valley of years through which, in all probability, they must pass, in their pilgrimage to that bourne allotted to every son and daughter of Adam. And this Alicia could do; and never was she more happy than when seated by her own fire-side, surrounded by the resources she had not neglected in earlier hours-her harp, her pencil, and the graceful labours of the needle. With such companions to a mind capable of appreciating them, time cannot hang heavily. Why are so many single women, of middle-age, morose or mischief-making? Because, having abandoned in youth, as toils, those resources which would have proved pleasures when the hey-dey of life was passed, their minds have become a barren soil, and weeds have sprung up where flowers might have flourished. The situation of a married and an unmarried female, it must be confessed, is very unequal: the former having greatly the advantage in the scale of earthly happiness: and the world makes the distinction still more unequal than nature intended it. At thirty-five, the married woman is considered in the noon of life; while the single one is looked upon as passée. Again, the wife has less necessity to depend on intellectual pleasures as resources from the lassitude of ennui. She has duties to perform, let her station in life be what it may, to which the single woman cannot turn to vary the monotony of her existence. The matron, if she be a mother, will find a sufficient stimulus to keep up or revive, in the early instruction which it is one of woman's sweetest privileges to give her offspring, the knowledge and accomplishments she has learned in her own youth. What pleasure can be higher or more unalloyed to the bestower-what sight more endearing to the beholder-than a matron, o'er whose brow the shadow of Time, like that on the dial, has passed, yet left much of the sunny light of life behind, leading her daughter to emulate the graces of which she herself is so fair a pattern? Or to mark a son, in all the pride of youthful manhood, paying back with love, little short of adoration, the cares of her whose gentle instructions first lured him to seek the wider paths of knowledge, and at whose knee his infant prayer was first breathed? Other feelings grow cold-other memories pass away; but the gentle image of the mother who has watched our childhood-her love, her tenderness, her unwearied devotion, will for ever be mirrored in the human heart. But we must digress no longer from our story. CHAPTER XXII. "I still had hopes-for hope will stay, So, like the star which ushers day, We scarce can think it heralds night. I hoped that, after all its strife, My weary heart at length should rest, Find harbour in a brother's breast." Moore. ONE autumnal evening, Alicia, who still resided at Woodlands, endeared to her by so many associa tions, had just returned from a ramble—an attendant greyhound, a favourite of her father's, being her only companion ;-when a letter, bearing a |