her husband's conduct and his shameful death were but too well known.
Alas! he know not how the lonely heart will pine for the old familiar
haunts--how the sight of inanimate objects which have been loved in
childhood will freshen into living greenness its desolate wastes. The
sordid lover of gold, the eager aspirant for this world's trifling
distinctions, feels nothing, knows nothing, of this.

Elinor Wildegrave, the only child of these unhappy parents, had just
completed her seventeenth year, and might have formed a perfect model of
youthful innocence and beauty. Her personal endowments were so
remarkable, that they soon became the subject of conversation, alike in
the halls of the wealthy and in the humble abodes of the poor. The
village-gossips were not backward in mating the young heiress of sorrow
with the richest and noblest in the land. Elinor was not unconscious of
her personal attractions, but a natural delicacy of mind made her shrink
from general admiration. Her mother's scanty income did not enable them
to hire servants; and the work of the house devolved upon Elinor, who
was too dutiful a child to suffer her ailing mother to assist her in
these domestic labors. The lighter employments of sewing and knitting,
her mother shared; and they were glad to increase their slender means by
taking in plain work; which so completely occupied the young girl's
time, that she was rarely seen abroad, excepting on Sundays, when she
accompanied her mother to the parish church; and then, the loveliness
which attracted such attention was always partially concealed by a large
veil. Mark Hurdlestone's valet happened to meet the young lady returning
home through the park without this envious appendage, and was so struck
with her beauty, that he gave his young master an eloquent description
of the angel he had seen.

"Believe me, sir, she is a mate for the King. If I were but a gentleman