There could not be a doubt that the disease of which Sister Smiggs died, and which it is feared the State to which she belongs will one day die, was little dignity.  Leaving her then in the arms of the House of the Foreign Mission, and her burial to the Secretary of the very excellent “Tract Society” she struggled so faithfully to serve, we close this chapter of events, the reader having, no doubt, discovered the husband of Madame Montford in the wretched man, Mr. Toddleworth.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The two pictures.

We come now to another stage of this history.  Six months have glided into the past since the events recorded in the foregoing chapter.  The political world of Charleston is resolved to remain in the Union a few months longer.  It is a pleasant evening in early May.  The western sky is golden with the setting sun, and the heavens are filled with battlements of refulgent clouds, now softening away into night.  Yonder to the East, reposes a dark grove.  A gentle breeze fans through its foliage, the leaves laugh and whisper, the perfumes of flowers are diffusing through the air birds make melodious with their songs, the trilling stream mingles its murmurs, and nature would seem gathering her beauties into one enchanting harmony.  In the foreground of the grove, and looking as if it borrowed solitude of the deep foliage, in which it is half buried, rises a pretty villa, wherein may be seen, surrounded by luxuries the common herd might well envy, the fair, the beautiful siren, Anna Bonard.  In the dingy little back parlor of the old antiquary, grim poverty looking in through every crevasse, sits the artless and pure-minded Maria McArthur.  How different are the thoughts, the hopes, the emotions of these two women.  Comfort would seem smiling on the one, while destitution threatens the other.  To the eye that looks only upon the surface, how deceptive is the picture.  The one with every wish gratified, an expression of sorrow shadowing her countenance, and that freshness and sweetness for which she was distinguished passing away, contemplates herself a submissive captive, at the mercy of one for whom she has no love, whose gold she cannot inherit, and whose roof she must some day leave for the street.  The other feels poverty grasping at her, but is proud in the possession of her virtue; and though trouble would seem tracing its lines upon her features, her heart remains untouched by remorse;—­she is strong in the consciousness that when all else is gone, her virtue will remain her beacon light to happiness.  Anna, in the loss of that virtue, sees herself shut out from that very world that points her to the yawning chasm of her future; she feels how like a slave in the hands of one whose heart is as cold as his smiles are false, she is.  Maria owes the world no hate, nor are her thougnts disturbed by such contemplations.  Anna, with embittered and remorseful feelings-with