public advantage or personal ambition; a gentleman, high-bred and
fastidiously delicate, yet sometimes requiring a considerable
relaxation in his behalf of the common rules of society. In truth,
there were so many anomalies in his character, and, though shrinking
with diseased sensibility from public notice, it had been his fatality
so often to become the topic of the day by some wild eccentricity of
conduct, that people searched his lineage for a hereditary taint of
insanity. But there was no need of this. His caprices had their origin
in a mind that lacked the support of an engrossing purpose, and in
feelings that preyed upon themselves for want of other food. If he
were mad, it was the consequence, and not the cause, of an aimless and
abortive life.

The widow was as complete a contrast to her third bridegroom in
everything but age as can well be conceived. Compelled to relinquish
her first engagement, she had been united to a man of twice her own
years, to whom she became an exemplary wife, and by whose death she
was left in possession of a splendid fortune. A Southern gentleman
considerably younger than herself succeeded to her hand and carried
her to Charleston, where after many uncomfortable years she found
herself again a widow. It would have been singular if any uncommon
delicacy of feeling had survived through such a life as Mrs. Dabney's;
it could not but be crushed and killed by her early disappointment,
the cold duty of her first marriage, the dislocation of the heart's
principles consequent on a second union, and the unkindness of her
Southern husband, which had inevitably driven her to connect the idea
of his death with that of her comfort. To be brief, she was that
wisest but unloveliest variety of woman, a philosopher, bearing
troubles of the heart with equanimity, dispensing with all that should
have been her happiness and making the best of what remained. Sage in