which would jar most painfully did it come in contact with anything resembling pride.  Had you grown up such as you were in childhood, your union with St. Eval, much as you might think you loved each other, would not have been productive of lasting happiness to either.  Let him see dependence is not merely a profession which your every action would contradict; from independence spring so many evils, that I feel sure you will avoid it.  It is, I regret to say, a prevailing error in those circles wherein your rank will entitle you to mingle; an error that must ever endanger conjugal happiness.  When a woman marries, the world, except as the arbiter of propriety, ought to be forgotten; all her endeavours to please, to soothe, to cheer, must still be exerted even more than before marriage, but exerted only for her husband; not one little pleasing art, not one accomplishment should be given up, but used as affection dictates, to enhance her value in the eyes of him whose felicity it should be her principal aim to increase.  You will be placed in an exalted station in the opinion of the world, my beloved child, a station of temptation, flattery, danger, more so than has over yet been yours; but I do not tremble now as I did, too forebodingly, when the world was first opened to your view.  You have learned to mistrust your own strength, to seek it where alone it can be found, to examine your every action by the Word of God, and with these feelings you are safe.  My Caroline will not fail in duty to her husband or herself.”

“Nor to you, my mother, my devoted mother!” exclaimed Caroline, as she fondly kissed her.  “It is to you, next to my God, I owe this blessing; and oh, if it be my lot to be a mother, may I be to my children, as far, at least, as one so much inferior in piety and virtue can be, what you have been to me.  Oh, might I but resemble you, as my full heart has so lately longed, St. Eval might be happy!”

At the earnest entreaty of St. Eval and Caroline, both families consented that the ceremonial of their marriage should take place in the same venerable church where the first childish prayers of Caroline had ascended from a house of God, and the service be performed by the revered and pious rector of Oakwood, the clergyman who, from her earliest childhood, she had been taught to respect and love, as the humble representative of Him whose truths he so ably taught.  Caroline had consented to name the second week of September as the period of her espousals.  The few chosen friends of both families who were to be invited to the ceremony were to assemble in the hospitable halls of Oakwood, and earnestly did every member of Mr. Hamilton’s family hope that the long-absent sailor, Edward Fortescue, who was soon expected home, might arrive in time to be present at the marriage of his cousin.  How the young heart of his orphan sister fluttered with delight at the thought of beholding him again we will not attempt to describe, but it was shared with almost equal warmth by Mrs. Hamilton, whose desire was so great that her gallant nephew, the brave preserver of her husband, might be present at the approaching joyful event, that she laughingly told Ellen she certainly would postpone the ceremony till Edward arrived, whatever opposition she might have to encounter.