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180 UNCLE TOM’S CABIN; OR,

she related how, for a long time, his letters had ceased to arrive ;
how she had written time and again, till she became weary and
doubtful ; how her health had failed under her anxieties, and how,
at last, she had discovered the whole fraud which had been prac-
tised on them both. The letter ended with expressions of hope
and thankfulness, and professions of undying affection, which
were more bitter than death to the unhappy young man. He
wrote to her immediately :—

‘TI have received yours—but too late. I believed all I heard.
I was desperate. I am married, and all is over. Only forget—
it is all that remains for either of us.”

And thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augus-
tine St. Clare; but the real remained—the real, like the flat,
bare, oozy tide-mud, when the blue sparkling wave, with all its
company of gliding boats and white-winged ships, its music of oars
and chiming waters, has gone down, and there it lies, flat, slimy,
bare—exceedingly real.

Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and
that is the end of it; and ina story this is very convenient. But
in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to
us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drink-
ing, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading,
and all that makes up what is commonly called living yet to be

gone through; and this yet remained to Augustine. Had his
wife been a whole woman, she might yet have done something—as
woman can—to mend the broken threads of life, and weave again
into a tissue of brightness. But Marie St. Clare could not
see that they had been broken. As before stated, she con-
sisted of a fine figure, a pair of splendid eyes, and a hundred
thousand dollars; and none of these items were precisely the

ones to minister to a mind diseased.

When Augustine, pale as death, was found lying on the sofa,
and pleaded sudden sick-headache as the cause of his distress,
she recommended to him to smell of hartshorn; and when the
paleness and headache came on week after week, she only said
that she never thought Mr. St. Clare was sickly ; but it seems
he was very liable to sick-headaches, and that it was a very un-
fortunate thing for her, because he didn’t enjoy going into com-
pany with her, and it seemed odd to go so much alone, when they
were just married. -Augustine was glad in his heart that he had
married so undiscerning a woman; but as the glosses and civili-
ties of the honeymoon wore away, he discovered that a beautiful
young woman, who has lived all her life to be caressed and
waited on, might prove quite a hard mistress in domestic life.
Marie had never possessed much capability of affection, or much
sensibility ; and the little that she had ‘had merged into a most
intense and unconscious selfishness ; a sélfishness the more hope-
less from its quiet obtuseness, its utter ignorance of any claims