had my own way, I know who it would have been; but there were mamma
and Anna Maria always saying how fortunate I was, and that he would
be Prime Minister, and all the rest. Oh! I was far too young and
foolish for him. He should have married a sober body, such as you,
Mary! Why did he not? She wished she had never teased him by going
out so much, and letting people talk nonsense; he had been very kind,
and she was not half good enough for him. That confession, made to
him, would have been balm for ever; but she had not resolution for
the effort, and the days slid away till the worst fears were
fulfilled. Nay, were they the worst fears? Was there not an
unavowed sense that it was safer that she should die, while innocent
of all but wayward folly, than be left to perils which she was so
little able to resist?

The iron expression of grief on her husband's face had forbidden all
sympathy, all attempt at consolation. He had returned at once to his
business in London, there to find that poor Louisa's extravagance had
equalled her folly, and that he, whose pride it had been to redeem
his paternal property, was thrown back by heavy debts on his own
account. This had been known to Mrs. Ponsonby, but by no word from
him; he had never permitted the most distant reference to his wife,
and yet, with inconsistency betraying his passionate love, he had
ordered one of the most beautiful and costly monuments that art could
execute, for her grave at Ormersfield, and had sent brief but
explicit orders that, contrary to all family precedent, his infant
should bear no name but Louis.

On this boy Mrs. Ponsonby had founded all her hopes of a renewal of
happiness for her cousin; but when she had left England there had
been little amalgamation between the volatile animated boy, and his