children if she had any. To this place she repaired as her future home, wisely resolving to make the utmost endeavors to leave the past behind her, and, once more surrounded by the friends of her young days, seek to retrieve this fatal step by devoting her life to the relief of the misery existing around her. Little did, she know the secret inroads her trials and sufferings had produced upon her physical constitution, or the mental exhaustion which was fast prostrating her whole system. These causes alone were sufficient to change the whole atmosphere of her northern home, and when in addition came the consciousness of the waning affections of those who had gathered around her so adoringly in the happy days of her youth, which even ten years of separation may introduce, that frail bark stranded, and she sunk down on her couch never expecting to rise again.
Heroically she struggled with the painfully contending emotions that were fast sapping the vital currents of her life, for the sake of the two beautiful children who seemed to have inherited all the graces and virtues of their mother, and none of their father's vices. At this time the parting words of Mr. Livingston, which fell so ominously on her ears on the day of her marriage, came freshly to mind, and banishing every distrusting thought of his sincerity as unworthy a place in her mind, she resolved at the earliest practicable moment to seek his sympathy and counsel, hoping to find in him a friend and protector for her children, if, as she feared, her own life should not be spared. He lived at some distance
