y social in her marriage relations, and never aiming higher than respectability, she missed the coarse mark of her husband who, with all h

, and do commerce chiefly with the Turk in the more torrid and instinctive Indies and South. Amiable, social, afraid of new ideas, frugal of money; if hospitable at the table, with a certain spiritedness that is seldom intellectual, but a beauty that power

rom an infidel or an abolitionist; reading was meritorious up to an orthodox point, but a passion for new books was dangerous, probably irreligious. To lose one's money was a crime; to lose another's money the unforgiven sin, because that was Baltimore public opinion, which she thought was the only opinion entitled to consideratio

y day, like the evaporations of those prolific seas which manure the thin soil unfailingly. Religion and benevolence were depositions rather than dogmas there; moderate poverty was the not unwelcome expecta

s sense of moral shortcomings expanded his heart and made him tenderly pious to his kind, if not to God. He admired new-comers, new business modes, and Northern intruders and ideas, feeling that perhaps the last evidence of his aristocracy from nature was a chivalric resignation. The pine-trees were saying to him: "Ye shall go like the Indians, but be not inhospitable to your successors, and leave them y

n toast were ready for him to eat, with some sprigs of new celery from the garden to fe

all of us can do to assist you; for if you had succeeded the reward would have been ours, and we must d

then searched his mind with his

I am less than a scoundrel and worse than a fool. I am a fraud, an

Vesta, with an instant's co

f all the sins. How loud speaks the first commandment to u

bed Vesta, "I loved you

that survives the long edifice of our pride. The treasure of your beauty and love still makes me rich to thie

come back. He was so grand, standing there in his unaffected pain and helplessness, that he seemed to her some manly Prometheus, who had work

ter into your mind and sympathize with the hopes you have had, it will lift

t him to his seat. He collected his thoughts, and resumed his worldly tone

me properties, incurring, I fear, a stigma upon my fam

h pale lips and

in a frightened tone, "who

one, "old Meshach Milburn knows it all! He has purchased the duplicate notes of protest, and holds them wi

s it, f

d, meeting Vesta's pale but stead

ful to tell. It will br

e. "What further disgrace can this monster inflict upon us

Vessy. Spare me, my darling

to touch every point of suggestion, stood looking dow

some solution of his mysterious evasion. He shut hi

s instant! You shall

ated to a window, looking at her,

d your creditor, Mr. Milburn, and bri

eak a shadow fell upon the window, and the figure of a small, swarth

urmured Judge Custis, "t

in her arms, and kisse

o this room to await me. Do you go and engage my mother affectionatel

tor had almost paralyzed Judge Cust