perience a more vivid sentiment if, as Lady Anne said, "he had been a marrying man," but the thought never entered his mind; when he saw that the children were become women, it reminded him only that he had become older in the same time which made the alteration. How that time had passed, how it had been lost or murdered, it were now vain to recall; his task was that of forgetting it, which was always done best among those he still thought and called the "dear children." To contrive for their present pleasures and their future comforts, was the business and amusement of his life; but we can hardly doubt that there was a certain tenderness in the tone of his voice, or a lingering look of his eye, when Isabella was near, which conveyed to her guileless and ingenuous heart much more than was intended. She imbibed a fond and abiding passion, the pains of which he could estimate only too well, and pity too tenderly. He could not bear to inflict on another the sorrows under which he had suffered so severely himself; and he took her, not because he loved her, but that she loved him, believing, at the time, that all other love, had been dead in his bosom, and feeling that the preference the dear child evinced would ever animate his bosom in her behalf.
After his marriage, under the peculiar circumstances already described, had he remained at home, enlarged his sphere of duties by entering into public life, or his acquaintance, as the head of a family, all would have gone well with them undoubtedly; but he
