The story of Emily Bute Charlton may be briefly told. Her mother, Mrs. Danby, was descended from that John Bradshaw who was president of the court which tried Charles the First, and who opposed a spirited resistance to the usurpation of Cromwell in dissolving the Parliament. Mrs. Danby was proud of her family tree. In her twentieth year she was left a widow, beautiful, ambitious, and poor, with one child, a daughter, who afterwards had in Emily a half-sister. This first daughter had been educated carefully, but she had hardly reached her seventeenth year when she accepted the addresses of a poor man, some fifteen years her senior, of the name of Berwick. The mother, with characteristic energy, opposed the match, but it was of no use. The daughter was incurably in love; she married, and the mother cast her off.

Time brought about its revenges. Mr. Berwick had inherited ten acres of land on the island of Manhattan. He tried to sell it, but was so fortunate as to find nobody to buy. So he held on to the land, and by hard scratching managed to pay the taxes on it. In ten years the city had crept up so near to his dirty acres that he sold half of them for a hundred thousand dollars, and became all at once a rich man. Meanwhile his wife’s mother, Mrs. Danby, after remaining fourteen years a widow, showed the inconsistency of her opposition to her daughter’s marriage by herself making an imprudent match. She married a Mr. Bute, poor and inefficient, but belonging to “one of the first families.” By this husband she had one daughter, Emily, the lady at whose reflection in the mirror we have just been looking.

Emily Bute, like her half-sister, Mrs. Berwick, who was many years her senior, inherited beauty, and was quite a belle in her little sphere in Philadelphia, where her family resided. Her mother, who had repelled Berwick as a son-in-law in his adversity, was too proud to try to propitiate him in his prosperity. She concealed her poverty as well as she could from her daughter, Mrs. Berwick, and the latter had often to resort to stratagem in order to send assistance to the family. At last the proud mother died; and six months afterwards her firstborn daughter, Mrs. Berwick, died, leaving one child, a son, Henry Berwick.

Years glided on, and Mr. Bute had hard work to keep the wolf from the door. He was one of those persons whose efforts in life are continual failures, from the fact that they cannot adapt themselves to circumstances,—cannot persevere during the day of small things till their occupation, by gradual development, becomes profitable. He would tire of an employment the moment its harvest of gold seemed remote. Forever sanguine and forever unsuccessful, he at last found himself reduced, with his daughter, to a mode of life that bordered on the shabby.

In this state of things, Mr. Berwick, like a timely angel, reappeared, rich, and bearing help. He was charmed with Emily, as he had formerly been with her half-sister. He proposed marriage. Mr. Bute was enchanted. He could not conceive of Emily’s hesitating for a moment. Were her affections pre-engaged? No. She had been a little of a flirt, and that perhaps had saved her from a serious passion. Why not, then, accept Mr. Berwick? He was so old! Old? What is a seniority of thirty years? He is rich,—has a house on the Fifth Avenue, and another on the North River. What insanity it would be in a poor girl to allow such a chance to slip by!

Still Emily had her misgivings. Her virginal instincts protested against the sacrifice. She had an ideal of a happy life, which certainly did not lie all in having a freestone house, French furniture, and a carriage. She knew the bitterness of poverty; but was she quite ready to marry without love? Her father’s distresses culminated, and drove her to a decision. She became Mrs. Berwick; and Mr. Bute was presented with ten thousand dollars on the wedding-day. He forthwith relieved himself of fifteen hundred in the purchase of a “new patent-spring phaeton” and span. “A great bargain, sir; splendid creatures; spirited, but gentle; a woman can drive them; no more afraid of a locomotive than of a stack of hay; the carriage in prime order; hasn’t been used a dozen times; will stand any sort of a shock; the property of my friend, Garnett; he wouldn’t part with the horses if he could afford to keep them; his wife is quite broken-hearted at the idea of losing them; such a chance doesn’t occur once in ten years; you can sell the span at a great advance in the spring.”

This urgent recommendation from “a particular friend, entirely disinterested,” decided Bute. He bought the “establishment.” The next day as he was taking a drive, the shriek of a steam-whistle produced such an effect upon his incomparable span, that they started off at headlong speed, ran against a telegraph-pole, smashed the “new patent-spring phaeton,” threw out the driver, and broke his neck against a curb-stone; and that was the end of Mr. Bute for this world, if we may judge from appearances.

Emily’s marriage did not turn out so poorly as the retributions of romance might demand. But on Mr. Berwick’s death she followed her mother’s example, and married a second time. She became Mrs. Charlton. Some idea of the consequences of this new alliance may be got from the letter which she has been writing, and which we take the liberty of laying before our readers.

CHAPTER II.
A MATRIMONIAL BLANK.

“Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,