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The hurrying visits of Mr. Falconer to his own house, the deep solicitude too generally impressed at this period upon his countenance, and the consternation in which all around appeared left, after his departure, would undoubtedly have tended to render his presence productive of pain, rather than pleasure to Maria, if she had not witnessed the more than happiness with which her mamma beheld him, and the overwhelming sorrow which followed his departures, and which she attributed simply to the fact of his going to England, which she therefore considered a very naughty place, and reprobated with all the warmth of her country and the simplicity of her age.

At length the time arrived when it became necessary for them all to remove thither—Sharon-Lacey, long mortgaged to its utmost value, became the property of one who had freely supplied the speculating improver to this very end, and consoled himself at those moments when his conscience reproved him for the removal of an old and highly estimated family, by observing "that as there was no son, the name of Falconer would in the course of a few years inevitably perish, and antedating that event was of no great moment."