But it was not so.
The step of Annette gradually lost its light elastic tread—her cheek grew pale—her eyes no longer reflected the innocent gayety of a happy heart, but bent low their drooping lids as if to hide their weight of sorrow—the bright smile which lent its charms to her speaking countenance faded sadly away. In less than two years after her marriage with that proud, haughty man, poor Annette was dying—dying of a broken-heart—of crushed and blighted affection!
Too late to save her did Eccleson see his error. He saw that he had drawn too strongly upon her gentle, pliant nature, and that barred from the light and sun of her childhood’s home—shut out from the kindly sympathies of parental love, like some beautiful flower of the forest torn from its genial bed, she was to fade and die at ambition’s altar!
To restore her, if possible, and bitterly repenting his cruelty, Eccleson now did all in the power of mortal to stay her angel flight. He brought her parents around her—he surrounded her bedside with the most skillful physicians, and lavished upon her all the comforts which wealth could purchase. He took her home and restored to her the treasured associations of her early life.
Poor Annette was grateful—deeply grateful for this too long deferred kindness; and now that in this reunion life seemed again to present so many charms, she would have desired to live had her Heavenly Father so willed it. But it was too late. The barbed arrow had penetrated too deeply her innocent bosom to be withdrawn. With her hand clasped in that of her repentant husband, and her head pillowed on her mother’s breast, her gentle spirit took its flight.
Gentle reader, this is no exaggerated story I have given you. It is but another life-drawn sketch of the evils which too frequently arise from unequal marriages.
THE ICEBERGS.
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BY PARK BENJAMIN.