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“Shall I send her word where I am?”–A pause of some moments succeeded this question.

“No,” he at length said, half aloud, while an expression of pain flitted over his countenance. “It is of little consequence to her where I am or what I suffer. She is, I believe, perfectly heartless.”

But Fenwick was mistaken in this. She needed, as well as himself, some powerful shock to awaken her to true consciousness. That shock proved to be the knowledge of her husband’s imprisonment for debt, which she learned early on the next morning, after the passage of an anxious and sleepless night, full of strange forebodings of approaching evil. She repaired, instantly, to the prison, her heart melted down into true feeling. The interview between herself and husband was full of tenderness, bringing out from each heart the mutual affections which had been sleeping there, alas! too long.

But one right course presented itself to the mind of either of them, and that was naturally approved by both, as the only proper one. It was for Fenwick to come out of prison under the act of insolvency, and thus free himself from the trammels of past obligations, which could not possibly be met.

This was soon accomplished, the requisite security for his personal appearance to interrogatories being readily obtained.

“And now, Adelaide, what is to be done?” he asked of his wife, as he sat holding her hand in his, during the first hour of his release from imprisonment. His own mind had already decided–still he was anxious for her suggestion, if she had any to make.

“Can you still obtain that school you spoke of?” she asked with much interest in her tone.

“Yes. The offer is still open.”

“Then take it, Charles, by all means. One such lesson as we have had, is enough for a life time. Satisfied am I, now, that we have not sought for happiness in the right paths.”

The school was accordingly taken, and with humbled feelings, modest expectations, and a mutual resolution to be satisfied with little, did Charles Fenwick and his wife re-commence the world at the bottom of the ladder. That he was sincere in his new formed resolutions, is evident from the fact, that in a few years he became the principal of a popular literary institution, for which office he was fully qualified. She, too, learned, by degrees, to act well her part in all her relations, social and domestic–and now finds far more pleasure in the realities, than she ever did in the romance of life.