The carriage of the ladies, with its idle attendants, was in waiting at a short distance; and the pale face but composed resignation of its mistress, indicated a struggle between conflicting duties.

File after file of heavy horse passed them in military pomp, and the wistful gaze of the two females had scanned them in vain for the well known, much-beloved countenance of the leader.  At length a single horseman approached them, riding deliberately and musing:  their forms met his eye, and in an instant Emily was pressed to the bosom of her husband.

“It is the doom of a soldier,” said the earl, dashing a tear from his eye; “I had hoped that the peace of the world would not again be assailed for years, and that ambition and jealousy would yield a respite to our bloody profession; but cheer up, my love—­hope for the best—­your trust is not in the things of this life, and your happiness is without the power of man.”

“Ah!  Pendennyss—­my husband,” sobbed Emily, sinking on his bosom, “take with you my prayers—­my love—­everything that can console you—­everything that may profit you.  I will not tell you to be careful of your life; your duty teaches you that.  As a soldier, expose it; as a husband guard it; and return to me as you leave me, a lover, the dearest of men, and a Christian.”

Unwilling to prolong the pain of parting, the earl gave his wife a last embrace, held Marian affectionately to his bosom, and mounting his horse, was out of sight in an instant.

Within a few days of the departure of Pendennyss, Chatterton was surprised with the entrance of his mother and Catharine.  His reception of them was that of a respectful child, and his wife exerted herself to be kind to connexions she could not love, in order to give pleasure to a husband she adored.  Their tale was soon told.  Lord and Lady Herriefield were separated; and the dowager, alive to the dangers of a young woman in Catharine’s situation, and without a single principle on which to rest the assurance of her blameless conduct in future, had brought her to England, in order to keep off disgrace, by residing with her child herself.

There was nothing in his wife to answer the expectations with which Lord Herriefield married.  She had beauty, but with that he was already sated; her simplicity, which, by having her attention drawn elsewhere, had at first charmed him, was succeeded by the knowing conduct of a determined follower of the fashions, and a decided woman of the world.

It had never struck the viscount as impossible that an artless and innocent girl would fall in love with his faded and bilious face, but the moment Catharine betrayed the arts of a manager, he saw at once the artifice that had been practised; of course he ceased to love her.

Men are flattered for a season with notice that has been unsought, but it never fails to injure the woman who practises it in the opinion of the other sex, in time.  Without a single feeling in common, without a regard to anything but self, in either husband or wife, it could not but happen that a separation must follow, or their days be spent in wrangling and misery.  Catharine willingly left her husband; her husband more willingly got rid of her.