AFTER THOUGHTS.

An unsanctioned marriage! Yes it was that. William Sterling had only one person that he knew of on earth to whom he owed obedience, and towards whom his whole soul went forth in tender affection; that woman was his mother, Mrs. Holt, the neglected wife of a second husband, who was not Sterling's father.

Who was this woman, with her gentle manners and exquisite refinement?

William Sterling himself could not have told you more than that she was an English woman, of singular beauty, when he first remembered anything; a proud, independent woman, soft in manners but resolute of purpose, who for many years had given up her entire life to his well being.

As a boy his education had been derived entirely from her own highly cultivated mind; and when that was insufficient for the requirements of his early manhood, she gave up a pretty cottage home in which their quiet lives had glided on together, and made her residence near the college, which gave him a higher range of education than she could impart.

This devotion in the mother was met by ardent affection in the son; but they were to a certain extent separated, and in an evil hour for her the isolated and lonely woman contracted a second marriage which, for a time, promised to bring some happiness into her dull life.

Holt, the man she married, was much younger than herself. Thrown into the society of this brilliant and beautiful woman, directly after a residence of two years in the tropics, her genius and proud beauty fascinated him. The woman was very lonely, and the ardent love of a man in the prime of his life, handsome, impetuous, and genial, won upon her prudence and awoke all the affections, without which the life of any woman is as nothing. It was almost the dawn of a new existence to this lady, when she entered the world again as the bride of Mason Holt. An atmosphere of wealth had become so completely a part of her life, that a return to it was almost Heaven to her. Besides, she loved the man, and that, after the monotony of her late life, was happiness in itself.

If Mrs. Sterling told the history of her life to the man she married, no one ever learned the fact from him; but one thing came to his knowledge about this time, that might have excited distrust in a less reckless man. Whatever means of support Mrs. Sterling had possessed before, had been utterly exhausted at the time of her marriage. With the exception of a few hundred dollars, set apart for her son's education, she had scarcely money enough of her own to purchase her wedding garments. But Holt was liberal to a fault. The wealth that he had, was lavished without stint, for a few years; then came difficulties, wild speculations, bankruptcy, and at last a shabby boarding-house, in which the sensitive woman shrank and trembled with dread, as she heard the step of her landlady on the stairs.

For a time young Sterling shared the sudden prosperity of his mother, but as humiliation and poverty came upon her, she grew reticent with him, and would not admit the evil that was slowly creeping over her life. But the young man saw it vaguely, and knew that it was a trouble which must be prepared for in the future. So he flung aside the indomitable pride which had been ingrained into his nature, and casting away all hopes of a profession, followed the bent of his own genius, and earned a tolerable independence as an engraver.

In this pursuit, he met the ardent, and reckless girl who was to be his destiny, and his genius went out and seized upon hers with the vivid quickness of two powerful fires, meeting and rushing onward together.

These two young persons, both ardent and wonderfully gifted, had been for nearly a year thrown into the intimate companionship of teacher and pupil, opposed as they were in character and training. A feeling of intense interest sprang up between them, and while Hudson followed his mysterious life, leaving his daughter almost every night to the solitude of that dull room, so irksome to a person of her quick vitality and ardent imagination, young Sterling became almost an inmate of the little household, and, as time wore on, the confidant of this lonely girl.

Sterling understood more of the world than the young girl, whose life had been so miserably circumscribed, and drew conclusions regarding the father, that deepened his sympathy for her. More than once he had seen this man enter places that would have cast suspicion upon an anchorite; low drinking saloons, and haunts of evil resort, which he believed would only be a resort of depraved morals and perverted taste. It was well for Constance Hudson that she was thrown into intimate association at this time with a person so much above her in character and education—so staunch in his honor. Sterling believed Hudson to be a man utterly unfit to control a girl so beautiful and impetuous, and to a certain extent had constituted himself her guardian.

It was a dangerous position for any young man—doubly perilous for a person of such quick sympathies and chivalric generosity. He saw this girl utterly unprotected, as he believed, rich in artistic genius and most dangerous beauty. Her loneliness touched him, her ambition and industry impressed him with admiration, amounting, at times, to absolute respect. What a glorious creature she might become, if once lifted out of the cruel isolation to which fate had condemned her.

These thoughts had grown and deepened in his mind until they possessed him entirely. He saw this girl, so rich in attractions, spending night after night in that dull parlor, or wandering from room to room without a single creature to speak with, whose association was not likely to drag her down, except the musician's family. He saw all this, and was ready to condemn her father for this abandonment night after night of a creature so rash, so impetuous, and rich in perilous beauty; and so far as he could, the young man took the father's place, resolved to protect her alike from herself and the evil example of a parent he deemed unworthy of so high a trust. The girl aided in this belief of her father's unworthiness; there was so much in his character and conduct which she could not understand, and this filled her with anger and distrust against him. These feelings she imparted to the young man, who was ready to believe anything evil of the parent who would so neglect an only child. These feelings and the sudden terror which came upon him on seeing Constance Hudson fleeing like a wild animal through the streets at night, hurried the young man on to a marriage which, in less than twenty-four hours, he shrank from revealing to his own mother.