"Well, it was before the old Knickerbocker's death that he I am telling
you of first arrived in the city. He gave up medicine, and devoted
himself to other studies; and, in the course of a few years, he found
himself occupying the chairs of History and of Science at the University
of New York. He also paid some attention to politics, and became, for a
while, a person of really considerable renown and distinction. He was
respected by the most influential persons in the city. Among the rest,
he became acquainted with the widow--as she was by this time--of the
Knickerbocker--and she showed him every kindness and attention. But he
did her the injustice of not believing her kindness genuine; he imagined
that she cared for nothing but fashion and display, and was polite to
him only because she thought he would add a little to her drawing-rooms.
At length, a sudden weariness of his mode of life coming over him, he
resigned his public positions, and his professorships, and took lodgings
in the family of a poor clergyman in Boston. While there, he took up the
study of divinity, and, before long, was fully qualified for ordination.
But, at this time, he fell, all at once, dangerously ill, and lay at
death's door.
"He owed his life to the care that the daughter of the clergyman took of
him. She was a sweet, gentle girl, a good deal younger than he; but she
grew to love him--perhaps because she had saved him from death. When he
recovered, they were married, and found a great deal of happiness; there
was no more passionate love, for him, of course; but he could feel
gratitude, and tenderness, and a steady and deep affection. They had two
children, and when they were five or six years old, the parents moved to
the country, and took a house in an out-of-the-way village."
"Is that all?" demanded Bressant, eying the professor's face with great
intentness.
"There's not much more. One of the first persons the minister--such he
was now--met, on his entrance into the village, was the woman he had
loved first--the wife of his false friend--she whom he had long believed
dead. She had settled, several years before, in this place, whither he
had unawares followed her. In an interview--the first for nearly half a
lifetime--all the old errors and falsehoods were cleared up. She told
him how her husband's heartlessness and insolent indifference had made
her leave him; and how, for the sake of her son, and partly also out of
pride, she had made no attempt to repossess herself of the fortune with
which she had endowed her husband at their marriage. The hardest of all
had been to leave her son, whom she loved with her whole heart; but he
was sickly, and she dared not expose him to the chances of privation and
hardship, such as she expected to endure. With some three thousand
dollars in her pocket, she had come to America, and since then had
never heard a word of those she had left, nor had they of her.