The Good Match - Page 2

roots, while its leaves put forth in a genial air, and placed in a hard soil and a chilling atmosphere, still to live on, but with its beauty and fragrance gone. She might be mistaken. But appearances troubled her.

Mrs. Markland lived in a neighbouring city, and was on a visit to her sister. During the two weeks that elapsed, while paying this visit, she heard a great deal about the excellent match that Florence had made. No one of the acquaintances of the family had any thing to say that was not congratulatory. More than one mother of an unmarried daughter, she had good cause for concluding, envied her sister the happiness of having the rich Mr. Barker for a son-in-law. When she parted with her niece, on the eve of her return home, there were tears in her mild blue eyes. It was natural--for Florence loved her aunt, and to part with her was painful. Still, those tears troubled Mrs. Markland. She ought of them hours, and days, and months after, as a token that all was not right in her gentle breast.

Briefly let us now sketch a scene that passed twenty years from this period. Twenty years! That is a long time. Yes--but it is a period that tests the truth or falsity of the leading principles with which we set out in life. Twenty years! Ah! how many, even long before that time elapses, prove the fallaciousness of their hopes! discover the sandy foundation upon which they have built!

Let us introduce Mrs. Barker. Her husband has realized even more than he had hoped for, in the item of wealth. He is worth a million.

Rather a small sum in his eye, it is true, now that he possesses it. And from this very fact, its smallness, he is not happy--for is not Mr. T--worth three millions of dollars? Mr. T--, who is no better, if as good as he is? But what of Mrs. Barker? Ah, yes. Let us see how time has passed with her. Let us see if the hours have danced along with her to measures of glad music, or in cadence with a pensive strain. Has hers indeed been a good match? We shall see.

Is that sedate-looking woman, with such a cold expression upon her face, who sits in that elaborately furnished saloon, or parlour, dreamily looking into the glowing grate, Mrs. Barker? Yes, that is the woman who made a good match. Can this indeed be so? I see, in imagination, a gentle, loving creature, whose eyes and ears are open to all things beautiful in creation, and whose heart is moved by all that is good and true. Impelled by the very nature into which she has been born--woman's nature--her spirit yearns for high, holy, interior companionship. She enters into that highest, holiest, most interior relationship--marriage. She must be purely happy. Is this so? Can the woman we have introduced at the end of twenty years be the same being with this gentle girl? Alas! that we should have it to say that it is so. There has been no affliction to produce this change--no misfortune. The children she has borne are all about her, and