Mr. and Mrs. Lester loved their daughter too well to cast her off.  They at once brought her, with her husband, back to her home again, and endeavoured to make that home as pleasant to her as ever.  But, alas! few months had passed away, before the scales fell from her eyes—­before she perceived that the man upon whom she had lavished the wealth of her young heart’s affections, could not make her happy.  A weak and vain young man, Fenwick could not stand the honour of being Mr. Lester’s son-in-law, without having his brain turned.  He became at once an individual of great consequence—­assumed airs, and played the fool so thoroughly, as not only to disgust her friends and family, but even Mary herself.  His business was far too limited for a man of his importance.  He desired to relinquish the retail line, and get into the jobbing trade.  He stated his plans to Mr. Lester, and boldly asked for a capital of twenty thousand dollars to begin with.  This was of course refused.  That gentleman thought it wisdom to support him in idleness, if it came to that, rather than risk the loss of a single dollar in a business in which there was a moral certainty of failure.

Disgusted with his father-in-law’s narrow-mindedness, as he called it, Fenwick attempted to make the desired change on the strength of his own credit.  This scheme likewise proved a failure.  And that was not all, as in the course of a twelve-month his creditors wound him up, and he came out a bankrupt.

Mr. Lester then offered him a situation as clerk in his own store; but Fenwick was a young man of too much consequence to be clerk to any man.  If he could not be in business himself, he, would do no business at all, he said.  That he was determined on.  He could do business as well as any one, and had as much right to be in business as any one.

The consequence was, that idle habits took him into idle company, and idle company led him on to dissipation.  Three years after his marriage with Mary Lester, he was a drunkard and a gambler, and she a drooping, almost heart-broken young wife and mother.

One night, nearly four years from the date of her unhappy marriage, Mary sat alone in her chamber, by the side of the bed upon which slept sweetly and peacefully a little girl nearly three years of age, the miniature image of herself.  Her face was very thin and pale, and there was a wildness in her restless eyes, that betokened a troubled spirit.  The time had worn on until nearly one o’clock, and still she made no movement to retire; but seemed waiting for some one, and yet not in anxious expectation.  At last the door below was opened, and footsteps came shuffling along the hall, and noisily up the stairs.  In a moment or two, her room-door was swung widely open, and her husband staggered in, so drunk that he could scarcely keep his feet.

“And pray what are you doing up at this time of night, ha?” said he, in drunken anger.

“You did not like it, you know, because I was in bed last night, and so I have sat up for you this time,” his wife replied, soothingly.