She became jealous, irritable, perverse, and soon taught her hapless husband the difference between herself and the gentle Agnes. Such a course could have but one termination: stretched at length on that sick bed which was to be her last, she sent to desire the attendance of her younger sister. Agnes obeyed the mandate, but only arrived in time to meet the funeral procession which conducted the hapless Marian to her early grave. The widower instantly recognised, from a distance, his young heart’s love, and rapidly flew to meet her; and as she shed tears of unfeigned sorrow for his loss, he took the white handkerchief she held and tenderly dried them away. O! at that moment, how deeply Agnes sighed! She beheld in this scene the fulfilment of the omen, and wept to think she had thus wasted some of the best years of her life, and trifled with her lover’s happiness and her own. ‘Ah, silly delusion!’ she exclaimed in bitterness of heart, ‘of what hast thou not bereaved me!’ After the period of mourning had expired, she gave her hand to Walter, and endeavoured, in making his days tranquil, to forget the felicity she had lost.”
“But they were wedded, grandam dear,” said the beautiful Lilias, laughing—“what more would the people have had?” “Youth, and its love, and its hope, and all its bright and gracious feeling,” said the venerable Countess: “they had all fled with time, and nothing but their remembrance remained with Agnes and her Walter, which made their lot more bitter. He was at their wedlock past even manhood’s prime; she was no longer young;
