In the year 17—­Captain Wilde was persuaded to better his already happy condition by marriage.  The lady he chose, or suffered to be chosen for him, was a Miss M——­, a scion of one of those extensive families, not now so common as formerly, which by repeated intermarriage and always settling together develop a spirit of clanship, so exclusive as to make them almost incapable of any feeling of interest outside of their own name and connection, and render them liable to regard any person of different blood, who may happen to intermarry among them, as an intruder.  In some parts of the Union these clans may still be found flourishing in considerable purity and vigor,—­the same name sometimes prevailing over a district of many miles,—­a fact which an observant traveller would surmise from a certain prevailing cast of form and feature.

It was with a family of this kind that Captain Wilde was, in an evil hour, induced to ally himself,—­a step which soon proved to be the first in a long career of misfortune.  The lady possessed that worst of all tempers, a quick and irritable, but at the same time hard and unforgiving one.  And she soon showed, that, in her estimation, the feelings and interests of her husband were as nothing in comparison with those of her family, and that, in any variance, she would leave the former and cleave to the latter.  Such variances were, unfortunately, almost inevitable; for the family of Mrs. Wilde differed both in politics and religion from her husband,—­a fact, it may here be remarked, which had no small influence on his subsequent fate,—­and the narrow, bigoted exclusiveness of the wife was utterly incompatible with the free and open-hearted fellowship with which the husband received his acquaintances, of whatever sect or party.  In a very few months, therefore, it began to be whispered abroad that the hitherto happy and joyous bachelor’s-hall had become a scene of constant bickerings and heartburnings.

But mere incongruity of tempers and habits was not, as was supposed by their neighbors, the only source of domestic discord.  This might in time have entirely disappeared; had conjugal confidence only been allowed its natural growth, all might have been passably well in the end, in spite of such serious drawbacks; for, from the necessity of his nature, the husband would in time have become completely subservient to the sterner spirit of his wife, which, in turn, might have been mollified in some degree amid the peaceful duties of home;—­a state of things that has existed in many families, which have, nevertheless, enjoyed a fair share of domestic happiness in spite of this inversion of the natural relations of their heads.  But Mrs. Wilde had brought into her husband’s house that deadliest foe of domestic peace, an elderly, ill-tempered, suspicious female relative, serving in the capacity of confidante.  This curse was embodied in the person of a much older sister, who happened to be neither maid, wife, nor widow,