ried the man who so truly loved her?" said Isabella, "and who was so worthy of her love? and did she prefer any other blessing that this world can give? oh fatal choice! if not to herself, to her children - but I will love Lord Burghley in her stead- and cannot you, my dear Lady Rachel, and this good Lord Burghley, teach me how to make my husband love me? He has not a cold heart; I am sure he has not; he is kind, he is indulgent! I know not why he chose me, if he did not like me. Perhaps he finds me too much a child; too little his equal to take any pleasure in my conversation; — and, with him, I am always so timid!-but can you not teach me to be important in his eyes?-not like Lady Charlotte! no, I will never again try to resemble her ;-but something perhaps I may become, that he will like as well, and approve more." - Lady Rachel sighed deeply; so as Isabella had never heard her sigh before; so as Isabella did not think she could have sighed. "There was a time," returned she, "that I should have replied 'yes!'but I dare not flatter you. Twelve years of the indurating process of the ways of the world, may have converted a heart of flesh into one of stone. Hopes, long dead, revived when he first brought you to me as his wife; but too soon I found that even his 'marriage was but another link in that chain of worldly calculation with which he had been so long bound. He had drank too freely at the fountain of others, not to be careful to secure his own - he had been too long the world's idol not to wish to be the object of its envy. Your beauty secured the one point; the sedulousness of your education, and Lady Jane's reputation for moral prudence, set him at rest on the other. Your person could not but charm his senses, but he troubled himself not to inquire whether the good qualities that were imputed to you, were of a kind to engage his fancy, or to secure his heart.-My dear child, I fear that heart must be purified before they can be so. He has been too long used to stimulants, to relish the simple fare of retiring love, and unsophisticated virtue. But if you cannot raise him to your level, you must not sink to his; there must be no doing of evil, that good may come. -You must do all for yourself, that you can do honestly-and leave the rest to Providence." The tears flowed fast down Isabella's glowing cheeks, as Lady Rachel pronounced these last words. "I am very wretched," said she. "I will allow you to say so," returned Lady Rachel, "because you are new to sorrow; and I will only hope that you may never know by fatal comparison how far beyond the truth is the strength of your expression." "What can be worse," said Isabella, "than to be told that my husband will never love me?" “I have not told you so," replied Lady Rachel. "I have expressed my fears, but I have not said that I have no hopes; still less have I presumed to say that there are none. There are sentimental quacks, I know, who pretend to give a recipe for gaining and preserving a husband's heart, as easily as they would give a cure for the tooth-ache. We meet with such wonderful performances in plays, and romances; where the rooted bad habits of years are eradicated by the shifting of a scene,-by the sight of a picture, -by a little manoeuvring on the part of the wife, but never in real life. I deal in no such juggling. Reformation is the work of mortification, or the produce of time; and the only cestus I can recommend as a charm for a husband is patient endurance, and a steady perseverance in the practise of affectionate virtue: in any case your own love will be a mitigation, not an aggravation, of the evil. The virtuous love of a wife is a fund of happiness that no misfortune can exhaust ;- but you must discharge it of all rancour, of all envy, of all jealousy; you must purify it till you can present it at the foot of the throne of mercy, as a plea for the safety of its object, when that object seems to be regardless of his own." Isabella felt her heart warmed, her mind raised. She looked on Lady Rachel as if she would by one cabalistic word impart to her powers so |