Were this a fiction that I am writing, it would be an easy matter to deal out a measure of poetical justice, and to recompense poor Ellen for all her industry, self-denial, and suffering in the arms of a husband, who should possess as many and great virtues as herself, and an ample fortune to boot.  I wish with all my heart that it were a fiction, and that Providence had never furnished me with such a seeming anomaly to add to the list of my desultory chronicles.  But I am telling a true story of a life.  Ellen found no mate.  No mate, did I say?  Yes, one:  the same grim yokefellow whose delight it is ’to gather roses in the spring’ paid ghastly court to her faded charms, and won her—­who shall say an unwilling bride?  I could see his gradual but deadly advances in my daily walks:  the same indications that gave warning of the sister’s fate admonished me that she also was on her way to the tomb, and that the place that had known her would soon know her no more.  She grew day by day more feeble; and one morning I found her seated on the step of a door, unable to proceed.  After that she disappeared from my view; and though I never saw her again at the old spot, I have seldom passed that spot since, though for many years following the same route, without recognising again in my mind’s eye the graceful form and angel aspect of Ellen D——.

‘And is this the end of your mournful history?’ some querulous reader demands.  Not quite.  There is a soul of good in things evil.  Compassion dwells with the depths of misery; and in the valley of the shadow of death dove-eyed Charity walks with shining wings....  It was nearly two months after I had lost sight of poor Ellen, that during one of my dinner-hour perambulations about town, I looked in almost accidentally upon my old friend and chum, Jack W——.  Jack keeps a perfumer’s shop not a hundred miles from Gray’s Inn, where, ensconced up to his eyes in delicate odours, he passes his leisure hours—­the hours when commerce flags, and people have more pressing affairs to attend to than the delectation of their nostrils—­in the enthusiastic study of art and virtu.  His shop is hardly more crammed with bottles and attar, soap, scents, and all the etceteras of the toilet, than the rest of his house with prints, pictures, carvings, and curiosities of every sort.  Jack and I went to school together, and sowed our slender crop of wild oats together; and, indeed, in some sort have been together ever since.  We both have our own collections of rarities, such as they are, and each criticises the other’s new purchases.  On the present occasion there was a new Van Somebody’s old painting awaiting my judgment; and no sooner did my shadow darken his door, than starting from his lair, and bidding the boy ring the bell should he be wanted, he hustled me up stairs, calling by the way to his housekeeper, Mrs Jones—­Jack is a bachelor—­to bring up coffee for two.  I was prepared to pronounce my dictum on his newly-acquired treasure, and was going to bounce unceremoniously into the old lumber-room over the lobby to regale my sight with the delightful confusion of his unarranged accumulations, when he pulled me forcibly back by the coat-tail.  ‘Not there,’ said Jack; ’you can’t go there.  Go into my snuggery.’