From Sharpe's London Magazine. THE NOBLE-HEARTED WOMAN; OR, PEACE-MAKING. BY MRS. ABDY. HESTER BEVILLE was the only child of a widow; her mother died when she was about twenty years of age; and, to the trial of losing her dearest and best friend, was added the trial of being reduced from comfortable to straitened circumstances. Mrs. Beville had been possessed of a small life-annuity, on which she lived in great respectability in a quiet country town, and from which she had contrived to save the sum of five hundred pounds for the future need of her daughter. Hester clearly saw that the world would be no garden of roses for her, but that she must add to her slender provision by her own exertions. She asked the advice of her friends. The unanimous verdict was, that she must go out as a governess or companion. "You need not feel low-spirited about it, my love," said old Mrs. Gladwin, who saw every thing on the sunny side. "My friend, Miss Cotton, got a situation as governess in the family of a nobleman at a high salary, lived with them a year, and then married the family physician; and Miss Fleming, who was companion to the wealthy Mrs. Brydges, obtained a large legacy on the death of her patroness, and is now living in a charming villa in the Regent's Park." "I pity you from my heart, my dear," said old Mrs. Dimsdale, who always looked on the dark side of things. "Governesses only see the world through the back-windows, as Miss Mitford says: they are slighted by the visitors, rudely treated by the servants, worried by their pupils, and neglected by their employers. And a humble companion is ten times worse: her time is not her own; her actions are not her own; nay, if she wishes her thoughts to be her own, she must take good care never to give them utterance." The opinions of Hester's other friends were modified from those of the two ladies in question, some being of a sunny, and some of a sad description; but all agreed in the fact that Hester was fit for nothing but a governess or a companion, and Hester did not feel herself particu larly suited for either of these positions. She was moderately accomplished, but she had read the advertisements in the Times, and she knew that she was utterly unfit to cope with the highly-gifted ladies so wonderfully combining the useful and the ornamental in their qualifications, who were ready to accept of a situation at a moderate salary. As a companion, Hester's mother had pronounced her incomparable; but Hester was well aware that the requisitions of her gentle, quiet, easily pleased mother, were very different from those of the exacting, irritable dames, who require in a companion the union of servility and good spirits, and expect that while she is treated as a slave, she must always appear highly delighted with her fetters. Mrs. Beville had so long lived in retirement that her connections and acquaintance in the outer world had gradually dropped off; she had a great aversion to letter-writing, therefore did not retain any hold on the memory of her friends by correspondence; and Hester had consequently very few persons to whom she found it necessary to give the information of her mother's death. Among them was Mr. Wareham, a distant relation of Mrs. Beville's, who lived in a village in Suffolk; it was many years since Mrs. Beville had met with him, and she described him to Hester as an eccentric and stern-tempered man; but Mr. Wareham was rich, and therefore every mark of respect was shown to him even by his most distant relations. Mrs. Beville had written to inform him of the birth of her daughter, and of the death of her husband, and had received short, formal answers -expressions of the writer's satisfaction at the first event, and sorrow at the last. Hester had therefore deemed it right to apprise Mr. | common to elderly gentlemen, that all the Wareham of her mother's death. It was young women of the present day are helpsome time before his answer arrived; but less, unless, fine ladies; and when he found when it came it was very much to the that Hester was not only a skillful needlepurpose. He had not previously written, woman and a correct accountant, but that he said, because he knew that Hester must she knew the time when the dividends on have many little affairs to settle and wind Consols became due, and the exact amount up before she could leave her present resi- of the Income Tax, he was disposed to dence, but he supposed that all must be think her a very desirable inmate; and pretty nearly arranged by this time, and whenever she made any allusion to the that he should be glad if she would come future governesship or companionship, he and pay him a visit; he knew that her was always ready to remark: "There is mother had only an income which died time enough yet." with her, and concluded that she had fixed on some way of earning her own bread; but as it might be agreeable to her to wait a little time before she began her new way of living, he thought that her health and spirits would be benefited by a change of scene. Hester showed the letter to several of her friends. "What a kind-hearted man!" said Mrs. Gladwin; "how anxious he seems for your society! Depend upon it that when he once knows you, he will not suffer you to think of leaving his house!" 66 I quite pity you," said Mrs. Dimsdale, "for the prospect of paying a visit to the man who could write such a letter. What an utter want of delicacy to talk of your dear mother's income dying with her! what an unfeeling expression to speak of your earning your own bread! Rely upon it, you will find that you have to perform the duties of a dependent without having to receive the wages of one." Hester, however, felt no inclination to decline the invitation; her grief was still in its freshness, and she did not feel herself equal to the trial of plunging immediately into the cold-bath of advertisements and agency-offices. She returned a grateful acceptance to Mr. Wareham's invitation, took leave of her friends, and in due time arrived at the residence of her unknown relative. Mr. Wareham was a tall, stern-looking man, about seventy, with a loud voice, and a manner that evinced a thorough determination to have his own way; he received Hester kindly, however; and as she had not imagined him to be a particularly courteous, urbane person, she was quite as well pleased with him as she expected to be. Mr. Wareham was better pleased with Hester than he had expected to be. He had imbibed the idea, by no means un Mr. Wareham, although a wealthy man, evinced no signs of wealth in his way of living; neither on the other hand, was there any thing miserly in the appointments of his house. His table was comfortable, his servants well-trained and respectable, and his few visiting acquaintance partook of his hospitalities in precisely the same ratio in which he partook of theirs. None of Mr. Wareham's limited circle would be likely to possess any interest for my readers, with the exception of a widow lady and her son, who lived on a small estate belonging to the latter. To live on one's own estate would be considered a very slight distinction by many people, particularly when the estate is of moderate value, and an annuity has to be paid from it to the mother of the owner; but in a country village those things are thought much of, and Mrs. Hawdon anticipated a very eligible match for her dear Edward whenever he could make up his mind to part with his liberty. No one in the neighborhood, she said, was worthy of him. But the mothers of marriageable sons are generally found to wait for the tide of events much more patiently than the mothers of marriageable daughters. Mrs. Hawdon saw heiresses "looming in the distance," and did not take any active steps to bring them into conjunction with her son. Mrs. Hawdon treated Hester, when first introduced to her, with the coolness and distance which she invariably assumed towards every pretty, portionless young woman, especially when Edward (as had happened in the present case) had made any favorable remarks on her personal appearance; but in a short time she relaxed much of her frigidity, invited Hester to her house, and smiled complacently when Edward presented her with bouquets. Mrs. Hawdon was wont to say "she never did any thing without having a good reason for it ;" and the reason of gardener had prematurely removed some plants from the green-house, they had become frost-nipped, and he actually had the insolence to assert that his master had ordered their removal. "The man was in the right," said Hester, calmly; and she mentioned the day on which the order had been given. Mr. Wareham's irritability was much increased by finding himself thus proved to be in the wrong, and after the usual fashion of testy old gentlemen, he declared that every body was in a conspiracy to vex and contradict him, and left the room with unmistakable manifestations of being in a very bad humor. "My dear young friend," said Mrs. Hawdon, "how very injudicious you are! What could possess you to contradict Mr. Wareham?" "I set him right when he was mistaken," replied Hester; "I can not call it contradiction to do so." "I am afraid you will find that he will call it so," said Mrs. Hawdon, “I have known codicils to wills revoked and rescinded on much slighter provocation than you have given to Mr. Wareham." her change of conduct towards Hester | since Hester's residence in his house. His was one that was perfectly consistent with her character as a worldly-wise woman. Mr. Wareham was getting decidedly fond of Hester's society; she fell into his ways; she did not, like the objects of his horror, "the young people of the present day," complain of dullness, or hint about carpet-dances, or say that a visit to a watering place would be good for her health. In another way she proved to be a great acquisition to Mr. Wareham. His sight had latterly become somewhat impaired; not to a sufficient degree to be detected in society, but so much so as decidedly to interfere with his evening amusement of reading. Therefore did Mr. Wareham declare that "the new books were all trash, and that the time was much better employed in recalling to one's memory the contents of the old ones;" but when Hester came to live with him, and offered to read aloud to him, saying that it had been her custom to do so in the evening to her mother, Mr. Wareham's inclination for new publications immediately returned, and the papercutter was taken forth from the drawer to which he had unwillingly consigned it. Nor did Mr. Wareham acknowledge his defect of sight, even to Hester; he said to her and to every one else "that he indulged her in reading aloud to him because she had always been used to it, and he wished her to make herself quite at home." Some months elapsed, and Mrs. Hawdon ascertained from her confidential friend, the village doctor, that Mr. Wareham's health was in a declining state; and from her confidential friend, the village solicitor, that Mr. Wareham had made his will a long time ago, leaving all his property to public institutions, but that he had latterly begun to talk of making a new one. Therefore did Mrs. Hawdon and Mr. Edward Hawdon pay decided attention to Hester, who could not feel otherwise than gratified by the notice which seemed to her to be so perfectly disinterested. Edward Hawdon was not particularly attractive either in person or manner, but Hester had been little accustomed to admiration or flattery; she saw that she was a favorite with both mother and son, and she took pleasure in their society. Mrs. Hawdon was sitting with Hester one morning, when Mr. Wareham entered in one of those angry moods which had become of very rare occurrence Hester fixed her grave, earnest, hazel eyes on Mrs. Hawdon's face, with an inquiring expression. She was, as I have shown, quite equal to entering into the mysteries of dividends and the income tax, but her experience had not qualified her to discourse on revoked and rescinded codicils." The girl is ignorant of the common affairs of life," thought Mrs. Hawdon. "It appears to me, my love," she said, 66 that you do not fully estimate the advantages of your position. You have, like Atalanta, a golden apple thrown before you; but you do not, like her, stoop to pick it up: perhaps, however, you may not know the story of Atalanta." "I remember it well," said Hester, "and I remember, also, that Atalanta, so far from gaining any advantage by picking up that golden apple and the two succeeding ones, lost her race by so doing, and discovered that they had been thrown in her way as an impediment." Mrs. Hawdon, finding that she gained nothing by her legal and mythological illustrations, had just begun a new kind of appeal by saying, "In the name of common-sense, my sweet girl," when Mr. Wareham opened the door. "You were quite right, Hester," he said; "I have been thinking over the circumstances, and remember well that I gave the order on the day you spoke of. I used to have a good memory; but memories, like other good things, can not be expected to last forever." Mr. Wareham left the room as he spoke, and was seen from the window in amicable communication with the gardener. Mrs. Hawdon was a close observer; she noted that Mr. Wareham had not come into the room to get a book or a paper; he had come into it for the express purpose of letting Hester know that he had discovered her to be in the right. "I must acknowledge, dear Hester," she said, "that you know the proper way of managing Mr. Wareham; you have displayed great tact and address in this business." "Dear Mrs. Hawdon," said Hester, "I am as undeserving of your present praise as I was of your recent blame; it seems to me that you are affixing unnecessary importance to a very trifling occurrence." "Not at all, my love," replied Mrs. Hawdon; "I have so true a regard for you that I should be sincerely sorry if any want of due consideration on your part should interfere with the disposal of Mr. Wareham's property in your favor." "I have no claim on Mr. Wareham's property," said Hester, "or the slightest expectation that he will bestow any of it upon me. He gives me his protection and the shelter of his roof, and I believe that my residence with him conduces to his comfort; I am desirous of remaining with him as long as he wishes for my society; but I have no interested views, and I am sorry to hear them ascribed to me." Mrs. Hawdon responded by some phrases of unmeaning flattery, and the conversation did not make any deep impression on the mind of Hester. She had heard Mrs. Hawdon denominated "a woman of the world ;" and although her experience of women of the world had been very limited, she justly thought that a somewhat overweening desire for the goods of fortune would be likely to form a portion of such a character. Hester and Mr. Wareham did not pass the whole of the evenings in reading. Hester was a good listener; and while she sat at work, Mr. Wareham would recount many anecdotes of his early years, especially those connected with his marriage-an event which Hester had quite forgotten, even if she had never heard of it from her mother, and indeed had fancied that she detected in Mr. Wareham divers of the peculiarities generally ascribed to an old bachelor. Perhaps, however, Mr. Wareham might be considered justly entitled to the peculiarities of an old bachelor, for his wife had died a year after their marriage, and five-and-forty years had elapsed since her death. He described her as a paragon of perfection; and although a woman of the world, like Mrs. Hawdon, might have surmised that "distance lent enchantment to the view," and that the short period of wedded life might not have been sufficient to bring forth its shadows as well as its sunshine, Hester was quite content to believe that the late Mrs. Wareham had been all that woman ought to be, and to pity the widower for the loss of such a treasure. About this time, Mr. Wareham had an attack of illness; it soon passed off, owing, he said, to Hester's good nursing; but he deemed it right to send for his solicitor, and gave instructions for a new will to be prepared. The solicitor dined with the Hawdons the same day, and certainly Edward Hawdon's attentions to Hester became decidedly marked about that period, and his mother was eloquent to every one whom she knew concerning the attractions and the excellence of "that sweet girl, Hester Beville." Mr. Wareham seemed pleased with the attentions that Edward Hawdon paid to his young relative. "I may not be long spared to you, my love," he said, “and you will need some one to take care of you." Innocent Hester! she thought the expression, "You will need some one to take care of you," clearly denoted that Mr. Wareham had bequeathed nothing to her in his will, and she made it a point of conscience to tell Mrs. Hawdon that she had reason to think that she would have no provision at Mr. Wareham's death. "All I can say, my love, is that you well deserve to have it," replied the lady; and poor Hester blamed herself for ever having considered the Hawdons to be worldly people. "If they were so," she thought, "would they wish me for a connection, when, according to their opinion of the declining health of Mr. Wareham, they must imagine me to be just hovering over the advertisement column of the Times?" "And did she live happily with her husband?" asked Hester. "I believe so," said Mrs. Hawdon; "but in a few years she became a widow, and wrote to her father, imploring him to receive her to the home of her childhood." "And he consented," said Hester; Edward Hawdon did not feel any preference for Hester Beville; like most shy, silent young men, he admired showy dashing women. But as he had a due regard for the main chance, and a high opinion of the diplomatic talents of his mother, he graciously gave her permission to call on Hester, and try to ascertain" and she returned home to die. I can from her if he should be accepted, supposing he prevailed on himself to make proposals for her. Mrs. Hawdon found Hester in the act of arranging in due order the contents of a small ebony cabinet at the desire of Mr. Wareham, who said that it had not been opened for many years. Hester had amused herself with the inspection of divers antique trinkets, scent-bottles, and bodkin-cases, and was just admiring the miniature of a very pretty woman, when Mrs. Hawdon was announced. "Who could be the original of this charming miniature, I wonder?" said Hester."It can not be the likeness of the late Mrs. Wareham, for I have heard Mr. Wareham regret that he possessed no resemblance of her." "I never saw the original," said Mrs. Hawdon, carelessly glancing at it; "but I have no doubt that it is the likeness of Mr. Wareham's daughter." "Is it possible that Mr. Wareham had a grown-up daughter ?" exclaimed Hester. "I am indeed surprised; he told me that his wife had died in her confinement, and I never asked any questions about the child, because I concluded from his silence that it had not survived." "It was evidently a distressing subject to him," said Mrs. Hawdon. "And so he lost this charming creature in her early womanhood," said Hester, continuing to admire the miniature; "no wonder that he can not bear to talk about her." "He lost her," said Mrs. Hawdon, "but not as you surmise, by death; the young lady was very clever, too clever to be satisfied with the frivolities of fancy work, flower-painting, and French novels. She wished to study the classics; her father engaged a young and handsome tutor for her, and according to many an ancient and modern precedent, the tutor and pupil became enamored of each other; the attachment was discovered by the father, he was enraged, the lovers were rebellious, and the fair Elizabeth eloped." not be surprised that he has never alluded to this painful subject." "You come to premature conclusions, my love," said Mrs. Hawdon: "she is alive at the present moment, for any thing I know to the contrary. Her father resolutely refused to give her any sanction, either as a wife or as a widow, and she seems to have faded from the memory of every body. I only wonder that I remember so much concerning her, for I never saw her; she was married seven-and-twenty years ago, and it was not till two years afterwards that I came to this neighborhood as a bride." "And she may yet be living ?" said Hester, sorrowfully: "living in poverty, in sickness, and sorrow?" "The fitting result of her disobedience," remarked Mrs. Hawdon sententiously. "While I," pursued Hester, "am fostered and caressed in the home which she is prohibited to enter!" "That can make no possible difference to her, even if she knew it," replied Mrs. Hawdon; "but depend upon it, she does not know it. I will come and see you again, my love, to-morrow, and hope that this little annoyance will then have passed away from your mind. I detest the sight of an old cabinet: people who open one after a long lapse of time are sure to find something in it to worry them." And Mrs. Hawdon took her departure; she felt that the present would not be a favorable period for interesting Hester in the impending proposals of her son. Hester thought of nothing but the miniature and its unfortunate original during the day, and in the evening addressed herself on the subject to Mr. Wareham, without a particle of the tact and address formerly ascribed to her by Mrs. Hawdon. "I found this very charming miniature in the ebony cabinet, dear Mr. Wareham," she said," and I have been thinking about it ever since." Mr. Wareham looked on the miniature first in surprise, and secondly with aver sion: "I had thought it was destroyed |