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Show 224 UNCLE T0.\115 CABlN: OR, they had been broken. As before slated, she oonsistcd of a fine figure, a pair of splendid. eyes, and n. hundred thousand dollars; and none of these items were precisely the ones to minister to a mind diseased. When Augustine, pale as death, was found Jying on tho sofa, and pleaded sudden sick-headache as tho cause of his distress, she recommended to him to smell of hartshorn ; and when the paleness and headache came on week after week, she only said that she never thought Mr. St. Clare was sickly; but it seems he was very liable to sick-headache::~, and that it was a very unfortunate thing for her, because he didn't enjoy going into company with her, and it seemed odd to go so much alone, when they were just married. Augustine was glad in his heart that he had married so undisccr)ling a woman; but as the glosses and civilities of the honeymoon wore away, he discovered that a beautiful young woman, who bas lived all her life to be caressed and waited on, might prove quite a hard mistress in domestic life. M:aric never had possessed much capability of affection, or much sensibility, and the little that she had, had been merged into a most intense and unconscious selfishness ; a selfishness tho more hopeless, from its quiet obtuseness, its utter ignorance of any claims but her own. From her infancy, she had been surrounded with servants, who lived only to study her caprices; the idea that they had either feelings or rights had never dawned upon her, even in distant perspective. ITer father, whose only child she had been, had never denied her anything that lay within the compass of human possibility; and when she entered life, beautiful, accomplished, and an heiress, she had, of course, all the eligibles and non-eligibles of the other sex sighing at her feet, and she bad no doubt that Augustine was a most fortunate man in having obtained her. It is a LIF.E AMONG THE LOWLY. 225 great mistake to suppose that a woman with no heart will be an cnsy creditor in the exchange of affection. There is not on earth a more merciless exactor of love from others t1um a thoroughly selfish woman; and the more unlovely she grows, tbc rnorc jealously and scrupulously she exacts lovc7 to the uttermost farthing. 'Vhen, therefore, St. Clare began to drop off those gallantries and small attentions which flowed at first through the habitude of courtship, he found his sultana no way ready to resign her slave; there were abundance of tears7 poutings, and small tempests, there were discontents, pinings, upbraiclings. St. Clare was good-natured and selfindulgent, and sought to buy off with presents and flatteries; and when Marie became mother to a beautiful daughter, he really felt awakened, for a time, to something like tenderness. St. Clarc7S mother bad been a woman of uncommon elevation and purity of character, and he gave to this child his mother's name, fondly fancying that she would prove a reproduction of her image. 'l'ho thing had been remarked with petulant jealousy by his wife, and she regarded her husband's absorbing devotion to the child with suspicion and disliko; all that was given to her seemed so much taken from herself. From the time of tho birth of this child, her health gradually sunk. A life of constant inaction, bodily and mental,-the friction of ceaseless ennui and discontent, united to the ordinary weakness which attended the period of maternity,- in course of a few yem"S changed the blooming young bello into a yellow, faded, sickly woman, whose time was divided among a variety of fanciful diseases, and who considered herself, in every sense, the most ill-used and suffering person in existence. There was no end of her various complaints; but her principal forte appeared to lie in sick-headache, which sometimes |