appeared in all the newspapers.  The splendour of the second solemnization of their nuptials in Brussels was the next theme of wonder and gossip, and by the time that subject was exhausted, London had become deserted, and Lord and Lady Alphingham might probably have returned to the metropolis without question or remark; but such was not Lord Alphingham’s intention.  He feared that probably were his history publicly known he might be shunned for the deceit he had displayed; and he easily obtained Annie’s glad consent to fix their residence for a few years in Paris.  Irritated as in all probability he was, when he found himself again fettered, yet he so ably concealed this irritation, that his wife suspected it not, and for a time she was happy.

As Lord and Lady Alphingham are no longer concerned in our tale, having nothing more in common with those in whom, we trust, our readers are much more interested, we may here formally dismiss them in a few words.  They lived, but if true happiness dwells only with the virtuous and good, with the upright and the noble, it gilded not their lot; but if those who are well acquainted with the morality of the higher classes of the French capital can pronounce that it dwells there, then, indeed, might they be said to possess it, for such was their lives.  They returned not again to England, but lived in France and Italy, alternately.  Alphingham, callous to every better and softer feeling, might have been happy, but not such was the fate of Annie.  Bitterly, ere she died, did she regret her folly and disobedience; remorse was sometimes busy within, though no actual guilt dimmed her career:  she drowned the voice of conscience in the vortex of frivolity and fashion.  But the love she bore for Alphingham was the instrument of retribution, her husband neglected, despised, and frequently deserted her.  Let no woman unite herself with sin, in the vain hope of transforming it to virtue.  Such thoughts had not, indeed, been Annie’s, when wilfully she sought her fate.  She knew not the man she had chosen for her husband; she disregarded the warnings she had heard.  Fatal delusion! she found, too late, the fate her will had woven was formed of knotty threads, the path that she had sought beset with thorns, from which she could not break.  No children blessed her lot, and it was better thus—­for they would have found but little happiness.  The fate of Lord Alphingham’s child, the little Agnes, was truly happy in her own innocence; she lived on for many years in ignorance of her real rank and the title of her father, under the careful guidance of that relative to whom her mother’s last words had tenderly consigned her.