later. Your fine gentleman likes variety!

You'll be as handsome as ever again if you'll leave off sighing and crying, and you may get as much of a husband as Stafford, and as good."

"Leave me, pray leave me," cried Fanny; and when Caroline shut the door, she threw herself on the bed with her baby, saying, amidst tears and shiverings, "Oh, has it come to this? deserted; lost! Am I such a thing that I cannot answer that cruel, bad girl? Oh God, have mercy ! He will not hear me, for I only come to him when I have none other to go to. Hush, my baby. I wish we were in the grave together. Come, now-hush-do." wiped away her tears, and catching up the child, rushed, half distracted, up and down the room, attempting to smile and play to it; and the poor little thing cried and smiled alternately.

She

The following are some extracts from the hapless letter which Caroline had brought back to her:

"Oh, Nugent Stafford, am I never, never to see you again! It is two months since you were here; two months! it seems two years; and yet when you were last here, and spoke those icy, cruel, insulting words, I thought it would be better never to see you again than to see you so. But come once more, and tell me if I deserved them from you.

"Remember, I was thirteen years old, an innocent, loving child-loving, but with little to love-when you first stole my heart. Did you then mean this ruin? God knows—you know-I don't. Did you plot it then? to steal away my innocence, when I should be no longer a child? You say you never promised to marry me, and you say that I knew what was before me. No, you never said one word of marrying me; but did you not swear to love, and cherish me so long

as you lived? And did you not tell me, over and over again, that that was all that marriage was in God's sight? Did you not say that I did not love you half as well as you loved me, and again and again reproach me with it? Were you not angry, so angry as to frighten me, because I would not desert my dear, good, old, faithful aunt, to go with you? And how have I loved you? I have given up my innocence for you, my good name, and the favour of God. I have loved only

you, never have had a thought beyond you. I wore only the fine things to please you; and truly now I hate to look on them, for they were, in your eyes, the price of what I never sold, but gave.

Mrs. Tilden has twice Six months' rent is due. I Tell me where I am to go? stay here if I could-the

"But for my poor baby, I would not send to you again; for her I will do any thing, but sin. told me I must leave this house. have ten dollars in my purse. What am I to do? I would not house has become hateful to me. I cannot bear the looks of Mrs. Tilden and Caroline. I cannot endure to have them touch my baby, for it seems to me as if their touch to my little innocent child were like a foul thing on an opening rosebud. The very sound of their voices disgusts and frightens me. Oh! it was not human to put me among such creatures. If you have deserted me for ever, I will earn food if I can to keep my baby alive. If I cannot earn, I will beg; but I will live no longer among these bad people. I had rather perish with my baby in the street. Oh! Mr. Stafford, how could you have the heart to put me here? and will you not now give me a decent home-for the baby's sake-for a little while-till I am stronger, and can work for her?"

There was much more in the letter than we have cited; but it was all of the same tenor, and all showed plainly, that

though betrayed and deserted, poor Fanny was not corrupted. Bold, and hardened indeed, must have been that human creature who could have cast the first stone at her.

For some months after Stafford took her under his protection (the protection the wolf affords the lamb!) he was passionately devoted to her. He made her world, and made it bright with such excess of light, that she was dazzled, and her moral sense overpowered. There was no true colouring or proportion to her perception; she was like one, who, having imprudently gazed at the sun, sees every object for a time in false and brilliant colouring. But these illusions fade by degrees to blackness; and so, as Fanny recovered from the bewilderment of passion, the light became shadowever deepening, immovable shadow. She lost her gayety, and no twilight of cheerfulness succeeded to it. The birth of her child recalled her to herself the innocent creature was God's minister to her soul-her pure love for it made impure love hateful to her. She became serious, then sad, and very wearisome to Stafford. He was accustomed to calling forth the blandishments of art. Fanny had no art. Her beauty was an accident, independent of herself. The unappreciable treasure of her immeasurable love she gave him, and for this there is no exchange but faithful, pure love; so her drafts were on an empty treasury. Passion consumes, sensuality rusts out the divine quality of love. Fanny's character was simple and true-elemental. She had little versatility, and nothing of the charm of variety which comes from cultivation, and from observation of the world. What could she know of the world, whose brief time in it had been passed between her school and Dame Hyat's room in Houston street!

Stafford was extremely well read in certain departments

He delighted in those

of romantic literature. He had a standing order with a Paris publisher for such books as "George Sand," "Paul de Kock," and all their tribe produce. But this was a terra incognita to Fanny. Her reading was confined to the Bible and the tracts left at her aunt's door. muses who have come down from the holy mount of inspiration and sacrificed to impure gods. Poetry, beyond that of her aunt's hymn-book, was unknown to Fanny; and when Stafford brought her Beppa, and Don Juan, she understood but little of them, and what she understood she loathed. Stafford loved music. It was to him the natural language and fittest excitement of passion, and poor Fanny had no skill in this divine art beyond a song for her baby. He gave her lascivious engravings; she burst into tears at the sight of them, and would not be moved by his diabolical laugh and derision to look a second time at them. The natural dissimilarity and opposition between them came soon to be felt by both. He was ready to cast her-no matter where—as a burden from him; and she had already turned back, to walk through the fires her sin had kindled, to the bosom of infinite love and compassion.

Stafford's vices were expensive, and like most idle, dissipated young men of fortune, he soon found his expenditures exceeding his income. He had no thought of sacrificing his vices to his wants, but only the objects of them. He had of late felt his mode of life to be so burdensome, that he resolved on reforming it, or rather, on reducing his pleasures, by marrying a young woman whose large fortunes would be a relief to him, whose beauty and elegance would adorn his establishment, and whose character would fill up certain awkward blanks in his own.

A person so gifted, and attainable, as he flattered himself,

he had discovered in Augusta Emly. Miss Emly's mother was a leading woman of fashion in the city, and she had received his first demonstrations with unequivocal indications of favour.

He deliberately determined to leave Fanny as he had done others, to shift for herself, quieting his conscience-it was easily pacified-with the reflection that he left her rather better off than he found her! As if simplicity, contentment, and a good name, were marketable articles, to be trafficked away for a few jewels, laces and silks, and a few months of luxurious life.

CHAPTER II.

FANNY MCDERMOT might have lain down and died in the extremity of her despair at finding herself finally deserted, or in her self-condemnation she might have done violence to her life; but her child was God's argument to reason, patience, calmness, and exertion.

She sat herself to consider what could be done. In all this great city, Mrs. O'Roorke was her only acquaintance, and though poor and ignorant, she was too her friend, and Fanny was in a strait to know the worth of that word friend.

"She can, perhaps, tell me where to find employment," thought Fanny," and certainly she will be kind to me." And to her she determined to go. She laid aside all her fine clothes, which were now unfit for her, and had become disgusting to her, and putting on a gingham dressing-gown, and over it a black and white plaid cloak, which, with a neat straw bonnet (her aunt's last gifts), seemed, as she looked at herself in them, in some degree to restore her self-respect, "Dear, honest old friends," she exclaimed, " would that I had