came to Alderbrook early in the spring, accompanied by her only son, to visit her new possessions, and finding the spot exceedingly pleasant, she determined to remain there. And so Lucy met the young metropolitan; and Lucy was beautiful and trusting, and thoughtless; and he was gay, selfish, and profligate. Needs the story to be told?
When the Howards went away, Lucy awoke from her dream. She looked about her, and upon herself, with the veil taken from her eyes; and then she turned from all she had ever loved; for, in the breaking up of those dreams, was broken poor Lucy’s heart.
Nay, censor, Lucy was a child—consider how very young, how very untaught—oh! her innocence was no match for the sophistry of a gay city youth! And young Howard stole her unthinking heart the first day he looked in to purchase a bouquet. Poor, poor Lucy!
Before the autumn leaves fell, Granny Button’s bright pet knelt in her little chamber, and upon her mother’s grave, and down by the river-side, where she had last met Justin Howard, and prayed for death. Sweet, joyous Lucy Button, asking to lay her bright head in the grave! Spring came, and shame was stamped upon the cottage at the foot of the hill. Lucy bowed her head upon her bosom, and refused to look upon anything but her baby; and the old lady shrunk, like a shrivelled leaf, before this last and greatest of her troubles. The neighbourhood had its usual gossip. There were taunts, and sneers, and coarse jests, and remarks severely true; but only a little, a very little, pity. Lucy bore all this well, for she knew that it was deserved; but she had worse than this to bear. Every day she knelt by the bed of the one being who had doted upon her from infancy, and begged her blessing, but in vain.
“Oh! that I had laid you in the coffin, with your dead mother, when all around me said that the breath had passed from you!” was the unvarying reply; “then my gray hairs might have gone down to the grave without dishonour from the child that I took from the gate of death, and bore for years upon my bosom. Would you had died, Lucy!”
And Lucy would turn away her head, and, in the bitterness of
