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In the mean time, Seymour Delafield, after casting one longing, lingering look at Miss Henley, became the husband of her friend, and made the fourteenth in the prolific family of the Osgoods, where his wealth was not less agreeable to the parents, than his person to the daughter.

Many years have rolled by since the occurrence of these events, and Miss Henley continues the same in every thing but appearance. The freshness of her beauty has given place to a look of intelligence. and delicacy that seems gradually fitting her for her last and most important change. The name of George Morton is never heard to pass her lips. Mrs. Delafield declares it to be a subject that she never dares to approach, nor in her repeated refusals of matrimonial offers has Charlotte ever been known to allude to the desolation of her own heart. Her father is dead; but to her mother Miss Henley has in a great measure supplied his loss. With her friends she is always cheerful, and apparently happy, though the innocent gaiety of her childhood is sensibly checked, and there are moments that betray the existence of a grief that is only the more durable, because it is less violent. In short, she lives a pattern for her sex, unfettered by any romantic and foolish pledges, discharging all the natural duties of her years and station in an exemplary manner, but unwilling to incur any new ones, because she has but one heart, and that was long since given with its purity, sincerity, and truth, to him who is dead, and can never become the property of another.

When Charlotte Henley dies, although she may not have fulfilled one of the principal objects of her being, by becoming a mother, her example will survive her; and those who study her character and integrity of feeling, will find enough to teach them what properties are the most valuable in forming that sacred character–while her own sex can learn that, though in the case of Miss Henley, Providence has denied the full exercise of her excellences, it has at the same time rendered her a striking instance of female dignity, by exhibiting to the world the difference between affection and caprice, and by shewing how much imagination is inferior to Heart.