Page:The Cruise.pdf/2



" small things of life are the terrible," says a popular writer of our day, and the saying is true. Let us all look back on the most important events of our life, and in what slight accidents have they originated! The following story seems to be but a succession of unlucky chances, and yet each was a link in the dark chain of human destiny.

Its scene lies in one of the gayest sea towns of Devonshire; one of those bathing places which, for about three months in every year, is astonished at its own gaiety, and when the season is over is obliged to be content with its own society, and its own natural loveliness. Gaiety in a place of this kind, is a different sort of gaiety to that in London. It is more familiar—more a thing of fits and snatches—belongs to the open air—and has a touch of wildness from the greenwood tree. No one more enjoyed the brief dissipation of her native town than Edith Trevanion. The heiress and beauty of the neighbourhood, the darling of her father (mother she had none), the delight of her circle, human life seemed to have made an exception in her favour. The troubles that vex the most prosperous existed not for her. Poverty she only knew by the pleasure of relieving it. Sickness and death had left her house at too early a period for her remembrance, for her mother died when she was a child in arms. Within the last few months a still deeper happiness had girdled her around. She was engaged to a young man, of family and fortune equal to her own; and, moreover, Arthur Ralegh was a very handsome young man. However, wherever there is any love in the case, there is never any want of a few miseries as well. Arthur was of a jealous temper, and this is a sore temptation to a petted beauty. Edith knew her power, and did not dislike using it. Truly and entirely attached herself—loving, too, with all the gay confidence of unbroken spirits and first affection—she could not enter into, and therefore could not allow for all the tender anxieties of her lover; she excused a little feminine teasing to herself, as a wholesome sort of moral discipline. It was an absolute duty to cure him of such a fault as jealousy. What would he be when once she was fairly married to him?