It seems odd enough, to say, that among such are found the greatest and noblest phases of humanity, and yet, is it not so? Is not that man great and noble, whose honest path lies straight within the precincts of righteousness? who has lifted himself above the power of sordid influences, who looks upon mortal throes as the stepping-stones to immortal joys? that man to whose watchful eyes the shallow side of nature is ever uppermost, he who serves but one master, whose only policy is honesty, whose only stimulus is the ever-abiding promise of a blissful hereafter, and whose attitude towards his fellow-creatures is one of charity and kind forbearance?

I have wandered a little, while noting down the details of Alice Merivale's fashionable wedding, and though I feel that it is doing Mr. Sylvester Davenport Clyde a cruel injustice to bring him to the front again, beside such pictures of exalted humanity as we have just been contemplating, I owe it, in amendment, for my trespass upon the reader's patience, to proceed with the interrupted thread of my story, and can therefore only trust to the generosity of his disposition not to dwell at any length upon the compromising nature of the contrast, but to remember Mr. Clyde, in his more interesting character of bridegroom, at a very showy and stylish wedding ceremony.

When the great event had come and gone, no one could tell exactly whether half his or her sanguine expectations had been fulfilled or not. I had an uneasy suspicion, at the time, that the soundness of the family's mental organization had become temporarily suspended, from Mrs. Merivale down—they seemed to have gone stark mad.

It was six weeks after the ceremony of pelting a glittering carriage with white slippers and rice, as it rolled away from their festive-looking mansion, that Mrs. Merivale dropped down into an easy-chair one afternoon with the greatest languor and physical depression, and declaring that "those fashionable weddings were enough to knock a body up for a month," quietly fell asleep among her comfortable cushions.



CHAPTER XVII.

There is only a little more labor for my long-used wheel, and the threads of my uneven life will have run on to the crisis. I cannot console myself with the thought that it has been watched through its tedious progress, by loving or partial glances: the bobbin was faulty and stiff at times, and the worker grew pensive and weary. Sometimes, the sunlight broke over my toil, and I sang to the wheel as it was rolling; but sometimes again there were shadows, and the wheel was then heavy and slower. Sometimes, the threads grew so tangled, that I sighed with impatience and worry, the weft bears the marks in the weaving—they are plain, in unwinding the pirns—and still, 'twas a labor of love, this patchwork of sunlight and shadow, this discord of sorrow and song.

"The fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web" said George Eliot, and who knew the nature of the warp and weft of our human fabric better than she! We pass from our joy to our sorrow, as the night passes into the day, it is part and parcel of the mechanism of our daily lives, smiling and sighing, we spin and we weave till the twilight's gray dusk overtakes us—then our tired hands are folded together, and the Master takes care of the rest.

From Alice Merivale's wedding, I was called to Hortense de Beaumont's bedside. In the comparatively short interval of our separation, she had wasted almost beyond recognition. We were mistaken when we persuaded ourselves, that she had baffled her former attack, she had never quite rallied, and when the March winds began to blow, her frail constitution gave way anew. She drooped so quickly, that it was too late when real danger was apprehended, to take her to a warmer refuge. Madame de Beaumont looked little better than her invalid daughter from weeping and worrying, when I arrived.

On the second day, only, was I allowed to see Hortense, and what a change I saw! There was death in every feature, every curve of her once beautiful face. She revived as usual, when I was announced, and wanted to sit up and talk a great deal more than the attending physician would allow, or than she was really able to do. They took advantage of this desire of hers, to coax her to nourish herself more than she was wont.

"If you take your prescriptions and obey orders, I shall let you have a half-hour's conversation with your friend every day," said the doctor one morning, in a bargaining tone; "if not" he added, pausing, and looking at her seriously—after which he shook his head slowly and emphatically, and said no more.

"Very well then, I will try to take them doubled if you like" she answered faintly, directing a playful glance towards me, and breaking into one of her old smiles. "I must talk to her!"

She could not "take them doubled," poor child, but she made heroic efforts to swallow them as prescribed, in order that she might have her talk with me. My poor Hortense! She never had but the one half-hour's conversation with me, for she passed into a better world, before the birds had learned their summer songs.

"Put away that book, and come here, my Amey" she said faintly one afternoon, as I sat by her bedside watching with her. I closed the volume and going nearer to her, sat on the margin of her bed, and took her delicate hands in mine.

"I have something to tell you now—my big secret—that I wrote you about, you know."

She began in broken sentences, her breath was weak and short, and her voice like an echo.

"It would not be so long if you knew about—about Bayard, poor—Bayard, and that dreadful—" she stopped, and a crimson spot appeared on each pallid cheek. I leaned over her gently, and said in a soothing whisper:

"May be I do know it, my little woman. Is it about Bayard's unfortunate marriage? If so, they have told me the whole sad story."

She bowed her head, in answer to my question and muttered feebly:

"I am so glad because I hate to speak of it, but my secret is not that. Do you know where Inez is now?"

I nodded affirmatively. "Well, first when she went there, Bayard had a dreadful sickness, and he wanted to die—called out to death at every moment to come and rescue him, though he was not prepared; he would not hear of forgiving Inez, he declared he hated her, and was glad of her affliction, and still, with these sentiments he wanted to die! Oh, how I prayed against his prayer!" she exclaimed, with an effort of enthusiasm, "how I begged of God, to turn a deaf ear to his mad supplication, and lend a willing one to mine. I suffered an agony of suspense, and at last, the crisis came, he struggled with it, conquered it, and got better. So far my prayer was heard, but my trouble was not over, he regained his health and his strength, but he was a changed man otherwise. He hated his past life and the woman who was so intimately associated with it; he became gloomy and reckless, gave up his religion with all its practices of piety, and abandoned himself to books of science, such as are the ruin of human souls all over the world. I remonstrated with him hourly, but without avail—" a slight coughing interrupted her here, I gave her a drink and shook up her pillows, and feeling somewhat refreshed, she lay back again and continued:

"Mamma thought that his solitude was perhaps his great enemy and wrote to his college chum, Mr. Dalton, to come and visit us for a little while." At the mention of Ernest Dalton's name a faint pink colour rose steadily into her face. "He came and spent three months with us, but did little good in the way we had hoped he could, but he was kind and consoling in another way. He gave poor mamma great comfort while he remained; when he left they sent me to Notre Dame, I don't know why, although it proved a great blessing in the end.

"My mother used to write me about Bayard's moods, which were now often worse, and never better. Ah! no one knew what a burden of grief I carried to and from the class-room of Notre Dame Abbey. Sometimes I felt that only for my mother, death would be a merciful relief, which is a sad conviction for one so young. One day," she said, lowering her voice almost to a whisper and folding her thin hands over the white counter-pane "I was praying in the chapel and I began to think seriously of all my troubles, how dark and gloomy they looked and how weak and cowardly I seemed! Suddenly a little voice within me began to ask: 'Why don't you make some desperate effort to save those whose misfortunes are making you so miserable? Why would you not try some daring sacrifice for instance, so that your brother be set free and the ultimate recovery and conversion of his wife be obtained?' I hesitated and looked through my gathering tears at the flickering lamp in the sanctuary. What sacrifice could I make? I had no pleasures, no real comforts in life—nor the prospect of any—except one, and even that was only a shadowy, misty hope, the merest uncertainty; but it was my dearest, best-loved fancy, and I could not do more then than resign it, so I knelt down, Amey, where you and I knelt side by side a few nights later before you went away, and—" a sob came into her throat and tears dimmed her eyes; my own were moist in expectation of what was coming. She rested a little, and allowing her tears to fall unwiped upon her cheeks, she took up the broken thread and added:

"I pledged myself to Our Blessed Lady, in soul and body for all the days of my life, if, by her holy intercession the double conversions of Bayard and Inez might be accomplished before I died."

"You mean that you promised—"

"Never to marry," she added eagerly "although at that time, only Heaven knew how I had grown to love Ernest Dalton. I did not know he was your friend then, Amey. I fancied he had spoken in a particularly kind way to me and he could not but see how fondly I cherished his every word and look—but I gave him up—the only sacrifice I had to lay upon that altar of supplication. Afterwards I saw that what I had done out of solicitude for the welfare of those who are nearest and dearest to me on earth would, perhaps, have been exacted of me by the cruel irony of fate. Ernest Dalton loved you all along, I suspected it on that day when we examined his locket together, and your strange, conscious look when I spoke of him convinced me of it easily."

"Poor Hortense," I muttered in a half sob.—"He is my guardian, my god-father, and the picture in his locket is not mine at all, it is my mother's."

"Amey! Your mother's?"

"Yes, he loved her years ago before she married my father. There was some misunderstanding between them and they drifted apart, but he has always been faithful to her memory up to this. They say I am very like her," I added slowly, folding my hands and looking away towards the distant gray clouds outside.

"Her living image," said Hortense, wistfully, "if I may judge by that little picture, but you—didn't you love him too, Amey?" she asked with an eager look, stroking my hand gently with her own delicate palm.

"It is a time for confessions, Hortense," I answered timidly, "or I should never tell you this, however, we may as well be frank with one another now. I thought I did, until I had reason to suspect that you loved him also, from that moment I resigned him to you and refused to think of him ever again, except as an old, esteemed and devoted friend. I did not know at that time that he had ever known my mother, nor did I suspect the existence of the close ties that bind us to one another in a different way. I only knew that in encouraging my regard for him, I might be trespassing upon the peace and happiness of your life and that is something that Amey Hampden never would or could do to Hortense de Beaumont above all other living creatures."

"You thought he would return my love in time and that we would ultimately be happy together, and with this hope you made your sacrifice did you?" she questioned eagerly.

"I did, my darling little friend! I would not come between you and your life's projects, for all the world," I answered, clasping her wasted form in my strong, loving embrace. "I would have been well repaid, when I saw you happy with my help."

She leaned her head upon my shoulder and wept in silence for a moment. I would have checked her, but there were sobs in my own voice, and water in my eyes. At last when I had calmed myself a little, I stroked her hair kindly and consolingly, entreating her to be quiet and composed. "You shall harm yourself, with crying, and they will blame me" I urged, "so cheer up like a good little woman, and be yourself again."

She looked up quickly, as I spoke, the fresh tears trembled on her lids, like dew upon the petals of some woodland flower, but a smile, as bright as the sun-ray that dispels the dew-drop broke over her wan and wasted countenance, as she answered:

"Blame you! Oh Amey I have never been so happy, as with you. You have been more than a sister to me, you have done for me what no one else in the world would have thought of doing for another but Amey Hampden!"

"It has brought you no benefit, my little woman" I said regretfully, "although I believed your happiness was partly in my hands at the time."

"It has brought me more than you can ever realize, Amey," she interrupted, falling back among her pillows, tired from her exertion. "It has held the cup of a soothing friendship to my parched and fevered lip whose draught has dispelled every sorrow that lay hopeless and heavy upon my heart. If life could tempt me, now, to return to my former vigour and strength, it need only hold up to my dying eyes the picture of your unselfish heroism. When one has a friend, such as you have been, the pleasures of the world have a double sweetness; in a little while" she added, lowering her voice, and looking away towards the western horizon, into which the setting sun had begun to dip his yellow rays, "I will have left all these things behind me; the joys and sorrows of my young life will recede together into the mists of time, as I go on to my eternity—but, I know there will be some remaining who will carry my memory, the memory of my little life, that was not more than half spent, through all the years of her own happy one, someone to pray for me, to commune with me in spirit, even when I have passed into that shadow-land. And that will be you, my Amey. Perhaps it will comfort you then, to remember that I died in peace and contentment after all—for my poor prayer has been heard in heaven. When I wrote you that last letter, about my dawning compensation, I could see that I had not made my sacrifice in vain, Bayard was changing, every one saw it, resolving himself into the better man, he has since become, and more than that, Amey—oh, how it thrills me to think of it!" she exclaimed with reverent ardour "a change has taken place elsewhere! We received a letter from the superintendent of the asylum where poor Inez is confined, telling us that she had many lucid moments of late, and that her attendants had frequently found her upon her knees, with streaming eyes and trembling hands, imploring forgiveness for her past follies. This was soon followed by a second one, which urged Bayard to go to her: her health and strength were failing, it said, and there were great hopes of her recovering her senses before death. His name, it further stated, was ever on her lips.

"Bayard had a terrible struggle with his pride and his passions. He walked the room through the whole of one livelong night, sighing and moaning, and talking to himself in muttered syllables—mamma and I could hear him, and he prayed unceasingly, again and again. I renewed my promises and my life oblation. Towards morning Bayard grew calmer and when the sun rose he unlocked his door and came to seek us in our seclusion. How pale his handsome face had grown! How wild and dishevelled his wavy hair! How marked were the lines of misery and care around his mouth and eyes! He came to my bed and leaned tenderly over me, I could see the traces of his recent conflict so plainly then."

"'Good-bye, little sister,' he said, 'I am going away for a few days, take care of yourself during my absence,—and pray for me.' He kissed me with his cold, dry lips and turned away. When he came back a week later there was a peaceful sadness where his misery had been. He had seen Inez again; had sat by her death-bed and held her dying hand in generous forgiveness. He believed her then that she sorely repented of her past. Her dark hair had turned almost white, and where rich curves of beauty had marked the outlines of her face and form there were hollows and angles of emaciation and suffering. She died with a pleading for pardon and mercy upon her lips, and Bayard came back a better man. He says he will devote the remainder of his life to an atonement for his past, and this is what I have been waiting to hear before I could die in peace. I cannot presume to say," Hortense added humbly, "that my poor prayers alone could have brought about these wonderful conversions, but I suppose they have helped, the good sisters at Notre Dame always told us to 'ask and we should receive,' and I believe them now. What is the pledge I have made to the fruit it has yielded? The happiness which the world affords is well lost in such a cause as this. Is it not, my Amey?"

"Indeed it is," I answered earnestly, "but all the same I think you have done the most noble and heroic of Christian actions in enlisting against your own earthly happiness to favor such a cause however worthy it may be."

"I do not regret it now, Amey," she said with a sweet, sad smile; "when we look back upon our lives from the watch-tower of a dawning eternity we are glad to see some noble effort standing out in relief from all the daily transgressions that confront us. I wish now there were more such purposes in my empty life."

"This one comprised all others, it seems to me," I put in, earnestly, "you renounced even the possible and uncertain joys of the world. You lived under the yoke of this voluntary self-sacrifice, which was bringing you nearer and nearer every day to your reward."

"I have been well repaid," she answered faintly, closing her tired lids wearily, and folding her hands; after a pause she opened them and continued:

"When they saw how ill I was they sent for Mr. Dalton again, and he came to see me. He told me you were on your way to visit Miss Merivale, who was to be married in a little while, and that you were said to be engaged to Doctor Campbell, which was puzzling news to me at that time. He spoke sympathetically but not regretfully, I thought, of your engagement, and I wondered more than ever what relationship existed between Ernest Dalton and you. He praised Doctor Campbell in the highest terms and said that you had 'made a man of him' for life. Bayard was glad to have Mr. Dalton with us and kept him for several weeks. He left with a promise to return soon again, I suppose he likes to comfort Bayard while his sorrows are fresh," she added, closing her eyes languidly and sighing faintly.

Just then Mdme. de Beaumont came in on tip-toe with some tempting morsel for her little invalid. This broke the strain of confidence, and as Hortense showed symptoms of exhaustion and drowsiness, after taking her nourishment, we lowered the blinds and stole from the room. In a few moments she was fast asleep.



CHAPTER XVIII.

By degrees Hortense succumbed to her disease. There were no happy revivals of her old mood now; no flickering of the old vitality that had brightened other lives besides her own.

She dozed nearly all day long, speaking very little and hardly heeding the questions that were breathed into her ears. The April thaw had set in and the air was moist and chilly. There was something cloudy and oppressive in the very atmosphere one breathed, but as the days wore on the sunshine grew warmer and brighter, and the birds hopping from twig to twig cleared their little throats and sang forth a merry greeting to the advancing summer-time.

The sunshine that flooded the world without grew warmer and brighter, it is true, but the sunshine of hope that gladdens sorrow-stricken human hearts in hours of wearisome suspense became colder and dimmer as each new day confirmed the painful fears of Hortense's friends concerning her ultimate recovery.

The time had at last arrived when death's dreadful warning rested on every feature of her wasted countenance. We no longer exchanged cheerful glances of mutual encouragement as we glided in and out of her chamber. All was solemn and silent as the awful visitor whose advent was now unmistakably and hopelessly announced.

There were tears, and sobs, and aching hearts that could not plead to Hope now, for Hope had grown powerless and passive; and so we waited in sorrow and suspense for the dismal day that was so surely at hand, praying and watching with our loved one while the flame faintly flickered with a dying effort within her soul.

May came—the bright, golden month of song and sunshine—and still the faint flame flickered, leaping up at times with a delusive strength and activity, then sinking down again until it almost expired forever. One afternoon I returned late. I had gone out into the fields in search of a handful of Mayflowers. I thought they might bring a smile to my darling's lips, and for hours I had wandered about the open country searching amid the tender early blades for violets—white or blue.

I was coming back as, the sun began to set, feeling tired and low-spirited. I had found but a few little flowers, for the season was late, and I was eager to reach my destination with them while the freshness of their beauty glowed on their tiny leaves. When I stole to her room, however, the door was partly closed, and Bayard was walking slowly up and down the corridor outside.

"You cannot go in now," he said in a whisper, laying one hand tenderly upon my shoulder, "Father Douglas is with her. Go and wait in the little front room," he added "I will call you when she is alone again."

I turned softly around, and crept on tip-toe to the sitting-room, at the end of the passage; the door was partly open, and I glided in noiselessly. In an easy chair, by the open window, with his back towards me, sat Ernest Dalton, alone.

He did not hear me, and I stood with my hand upon the casement, wondering what I had better do: it was only for a moment, however. He was not the same man to me now, with whom I had parted so strangely, after my father's death; he was neither Hortense's lover nor mine, but a good friend to us both; he was my guardian, and the only father I had left.

It seemed strange to me, at that instant, that I ever should have looked upon him differently, I, who had sat upon his knee in my childhood, and cried myself to sleep within his arms, why should I shrink from him now, when his shoulders were bending with their burden of sorrow, and his hair growing silver, with the bitter touches of time?

By right, he should have been my father! My poor mother had loved him so! perhaps he was thinking of her, as he sat there, looking vacantly out towards the west. I stole my hand from the casement, and crept towards him slowly and gently. Still he did not heed me, he was sunk in a reverie too profound; a little footstool lay on the floor at his feet, I dropped myself quietly upon it, and looked up with a smile into his face.

"Mr. Dalton!" was all I could say at the moment.

He started, as if from sleep, and turned his sad blue eyes upon me, with a quiet wonder.

"It is you little Amey, is it?" he said, at length, taking both my hands and bending down towards me. "How are you, little one; are you well and happy?"

"I am not little Amey any more, Mr. Dalton," I answered, with my hands still in his, and my eyes turned up to his good, honest face. "I have grown into a great woman since I saw you last; I have learned many things—sorrowful things; they have told me the story of my mother's life, and it has changed the whole nature of my own."

"They have told you?—did they tell you all?" he asked in a low, tremulous voice.

"Yes, everything," I answered warmly; "Mrs. Nyle has given me every detail."

He looked at me steadily for a moment in silence, and the tears gathered in his blue eyes—but they did not fall. When they had gone back again he drew the footstool nearer, and began to stroke my hair with one gentle hand.

"Amey," he said, "I have been waiting for this day through many a long and lonely year. I might have hastened it, I suppose, but I could not—however, perhaps it is time enough now. You know, now," he continued, taking my hands in his again and holding them firmly together, "why I have watched you, and followed your progress through childhood and girlhood, into your blooming womanhood. You know why I shared your little joys and sorrows in your youth; why I persuaded your father to send you to Notre Dame, when I saw how miserable your life was at home. During your absence I managed to find out the only surviving relative I knew you had. I feared a day might come when you would find yourself in need of such a friend, and indeed such came to pass. When you returned from school I met you in the Hartmanns' ball room; I had come in late on the evening train, and found an invitation among my letters; I knew you had come home, and expected to find you there, so I hastened thither, and saw you, as you know, first when you were dancing, and next in the conservatory. I shall never forget how you looked that night, Amey; it was as if time had rolled its iron portals back, and that forth from the buried past came the dearest and holiest associations of my life. I saw in you, as plainly as if the 'loved and lost' one her self had stood before me, the image proud and beautiful, of my first and only love."

"My mother?" I faltered.

"Your mother," he repeated.

"I remember now," I said, with slow, sad emphasis, "that papa looked strangely at me that night too, and did what he had not done for years before, he kissed me kindly and tenderly, and muttered something about my being the 'image of his happy past,' and of his never having seen 'such a likeness before.'"

"It is little wonder, child," Mr. Dalton answered, looking wistfully into the space between us. "He loved her, too, poor Hampden—every one did—but I loved her first, and best—yes, I know I loved her best. How I watched your every look and tone and gesture at this time, Amey," he exclaimed eagerly, "they were constantly bringing back my vanished youth, and casting fitful gleams of sunshine across my wintry track. And you took to me. I could see the reflection of the old love-light, faint though it was, in the eyes that were only like hers, and not really hers—yes it was a living pledge of her early love each time you watched for me, and welcomed me, or singled me out in a crowded room from all the rest. It was her inheritance, that she left you, wherewith to gladden the life that Fate had urged her to darken,—and you did it, my little one, though it could never be quite the same."

"I loved you, and watched you jealously, God knows I did, but it was not with that other dead love, which shall never be revived on earth. In the sight of heaven we belonged to one another, a pledge is a pledge, in spite of all the subterfuges and impediments of destiny, and we were pledged to one another. Therefore do I weep my widowed love, as if men had called her mine, as well as heaven."

"You were the only living reminder of my past to me, and as such I cherished and guarded you. One day I almost forgot that you were only what you are to me—it was the anniversary of that betrothal day, and though the winter wind blew cold and fierce without, something of the old fire glowed anew within my breast. I said to myself as I sauntered along the quiet street, 'I will go and see my other Amey, in commemoration of this eventful day, perhaps she will smile a familiar smile and speak words of kindness, like those my heart remembers, of long ago.'"

"I went up to the house and asked, as usual, for your father," he said, breaking into a sad smile. "They told me he was in his library, and with the privileges of an old friend I walked unceremoniously in. It was nearly dark there, and the fire was smouldering quietly among the gathering ashes, there was a lounge drawn up before it, on which my 'other' Amey lay sleeping. My coming in did not disturb her; she never moved, one hand was thrown carelessly over her shapely head, the other hung down beside her, a rich red glow was on each pretty cheek and the shadow of a smile upon the lips so like those silent sealed ones that twenty odd years before had spoken their love into my listening ear.

"I looked down upon her, scarcely daring to breathe, lest the spell be broken. We were alone in the room—we two, and it was a day pregnant with stirring remembrances for me. Even supposing the spirit of my loved and lost one kept guard beside her sleeping child, would she check the honest impulse that seized me at that moment? Would she cover the unconscious lips, that in deepest reverence and most hallowed and respectful love I stooped and kissed? Would she, Amey—tell me do you think she would?" he pleaded, with a wistful sadness.

"I don't think so, Mr. Dalton," I replied in solemn earnest. "If things had been otherwise, no one would have had a better right to do so than you. Even as it is, your faithful, I may say religious, love for my poor angel-mother recommends you before all others to my everlasting esteem and affection. Besides—" I added a little playfully—"I am your god-child, you know!"

"I have not forgotten it, bless you '" he answered. "You have her spirit in you," he then muttered, as if in soliloquy, and then went on to say—

"It was on that day, that I lost this little amulet of mine—this priceless treasure, with the image of her beauty within, I have worn it for twenty years and more, I shall wear it until I die! I knew I lost it in that library, and used to assure myself that it was safe, though I would not mention it to any one. At last, you returned it to me, and I restored it to its accustomed place. It is all I will have, in a little while, when Arthur Campbell has taken you away from me."

I have never been able to say very much in the trying moments of my life, and so when Mr. Dalton's story was ended, I only looked out of the window upon the gathering twilight, listening to the echo of his plaintive accents, as they settled down upon my heart forever. After a pause, he spoke again:—"You have promised to marry Campbell, have you not?" he asked.

"Yes Mr. Dalton, I think he is a worthy fellow, don't you?" I replied.

"He is Amey, he is. I trust you will both be happy," was the distracted rejoinder, and then Bayard knocked timidly at the door; I knew what the summons meant and starting to my feet at once, I went and obeyed it.



CHAPTER XIX.

It was my last vigil by Hortense's bed-side—for, when morning came with its glad sun-beams, her spirit had passed away—there was no struggle, no pain, only a sinking to rest, a falling to sleep; a quiet transit from life's worrying turmoil, into the hallowed peace of death!

With a handful of fresh violets, and a cross upon her breast, a lily, white and newly-gathered, in her hand, the emblem of that purity in which her eternal sleep had overtaken her, she lay within the quiet precincts of her little room.

Many tears were shed, and many sighs were heaved about her! So young, so fresh a flower in life's great garden, lying before us with its broken stem!

We bade her our last farewell, and resigned her to the grave; I, who had loved her with all the intimate intensity of a glowing friendship, kissed her cold lips again and again, and turned away from her, forever. Mr. Dalton wiped the moisture from his eyes, as he stooped over the coffin lid, and touched her brow, fondly but reverently, with his trembling lips, Mdme. de Beaumont fell upon the prostrate figure of her darling, and in their last mortal embrace, swooned away! Bayard leaning slowly over her, with a face almost as pallid as her own, muttered in feeble sobs—"My angel! my guardian angel!" and with one long, lingering kiss, the last he could ever give her, he turned from her, baptized anew in her self-abnegating love, a conscious and contrite penitent.

When the funeral was over and peace and quiet were in a measure restored to the agitated hearts of her mother and Bayard, I made my silent preparations to depart. Mr. Dalton had left before me. Madame de Beaumont parted from me with the greatest reluctance, and indeed, I was not over anxious to leave her so soon after her severe bereavement, but my duty now lay elsewhere.

It was with the greatest profusion of gratitude and expressions of the deepest appreciation and regard, that Bayard and his mother bade me their last farewells. We went together to Hortense's grave in the morning, and prayed awhile; I plucked one little sprig of early clover that had struggled into bloom above her, and carried it away with me as the last parting souvenir of my deeply lamented friend.

When I returned to the comfort and quiet of Cousin Bessie's home, from which I had been estranged for many months, I began to feel the re-action of all my recent exertions setting in. I struggled against it with all the violence of a perverse inclination to combat it, but I was baffled; I grew weaker day by day, and at length succumbed to the depressing influence of a slow fever.

How good, and generous and thoughtful, dear Cousin Bessie proved herself a thousand times over during my tedious illness. Never complaining, never impatient, though at times I was so peevish and trying, night after night she tended me with her own loving hands, cheering me up when I was disposed to be gloomy, with the happiest of predictions about my near recovery. At last, I began to show the effects of her careful nursing, and was well enough to be helped downstairs by Girly, or Zita or some one of that loving household—and even here their untiring solicitude pursued me; there was no end to the diversity of the distractions they provided for me, foremost among which was an invitation written by Louis urging Arthur Campbell to come and spend a few weeks at the house.

Cousin Bessie has most seriously maintained to this day that we treated her very shabbily on this occasion; she declares she shall never forgive Arthur, but she says it so good-humouredly that I am tempted to suspect her sincerity.

That she should have brought us together in the fulness and generosity of her heart, and that we should have taken advantage of the opportunity she afforded us of enjoying one another's company from morning until night, to plot and plan a speedy escape from her immediate guardianship, seemed to her a selfish and ungrateful return for so great a favour.

But she was too kind-hearted to wear her pleasant scowl very long. Mr. Nyle would talk of a time when "somebody" that he "had since had reason to know very well had committed just such an appalling offence, herself and," he argued, very suggestively, "unless that 'somebody' has had reason to regret and repent of her own rash ingratitude," he "could not see why she should interfere with other people, who were tempted to follow in her footsteps."

Zita and Louis laughed merrily at such allusions from their father, whose own eyes sparkled with the "light of other days," as he spoke them, and Cousin Bessie either bowed her head much lower than usual over her knitting as she heard them, or looked playfully up at her husband with a quick revival of the old time love in her pleasant, earnest features, and entreated him to "have sense, for mercy's sake and not have the children laughing at him."

In the first week of June, while the young summer sunshine was bright and pleasant, Arthur and I were married, Zita was my pretty bridesmaid and Louis our gallant groomsman; our only guests were the Rutherbys and Mr. Dalton.

Cousin Bessie gave us a cosy wedding breakfast, and it was amid riotous merry-making and boisterous good wishes for a long and happy future we drove away from the little gate, where some months before that we had begun the chapter whose joyful sequel was now in progress.

The rest is an old story, familiar to many homes and hearts, the story of that wedded happiness which is the outgrowth of two steady, abiding, enduring loves. I have been happier as Arthur Campbell's wife than I could ever have been as Ernest Dalton's, and I shall state why:

When we are young, we develop a tendency to exalt and idealize the common-place phases of life beyond all limits of reason or possibility. We flatter our buoyant expectations with the conviction that there is honey in the heart of every trifling flower we must gather by life's dusty roadside, and that it needs but the magic touch of our own hand to have it brought to the surface. This is a pleasant delusion, which, however, is susceptible of being rudely and roughly dispelled by an impartial experience as we grow older, when this exaggerated tendency creeps into our loves, and it is there it holds the fullest sway, and does the maddest mischief, the danger of a disenchanting awakening is still greater and more hazardous. For when we love in an abstract sense we exclusively, love in utter oblivion of the exactions of real life; we never stop to consider that that love which purposes to endure and strengthen with time must be coupled with a broad, impartial view of the stubborn circumstances, which are the facts of existence. A love that is all poetry and moonshine dies a sudden death in the face of practical dilemmas.

I have become convinced of this many a time, though my experience of wedded life is necessarily limited. Arthur and I have counted the grocer's bills, and made out the wash account, with the pleasantest smiles and most playful manner possible; and I have felt as I leaned upon his shoulder and scanned the items before us, that he was the dearest and best of husbands, whereas—Mr. Dalton, oh shades of poetry and song! imagine Ernest Dalton poring over a soapy wash account. I mention it, and Arthur joins me in the merry laugh the bare thought of it provokes.

Mr. Dalton, however, was always our good, kind friend, while he remained in our town. To the spirit of emigration that pervaded our cities some years later we owe his loss. He stole away without letting any one know of his definite purpose, and buried himself in the solitude of the North-West prairies.

For a time he was a punctual correspondent, but there came a breach and a pause, during which we learned of his serious illness, and subsequently of his death. To the end he had remembered us, and no one grieved for him more earnestly, more deeply than Arthur and I.

Some weeks after the announcement of his death had been made known to us, I received a little box which had been found among his personal belongings, addressed to me. It contained the identical locket which had been in my possession once before, and which was now bequeathed to me with injunctions to wear it faithfully, in memory of the two departed ones, whose time-worn pictures lay safely stowed away within.

His money and other properties he bequeathed to the little fair-haired prattler now playing at my knee. We have called him Ernest Dalton Campbell, but Arthur says we must keep that until he is big, and in the meantime has christened him "Toddles," which is very absurd to my thinking, but to which, with all the edifying obedience of a Christian wife I am bound to submit now, as well as in every matter of greater or less moment.

I thought I had finished my story when I laid down my pen, a few months ago, and gave a long-drawn sigh of infinite relief. Time has, however, hastened the development of a few more items, that may be of more or less interest to those readers who have kindly followed the dramatis personae, that have been flitting through these chapters, with a partial attention.

As I write the closing words my dramatis personae come trooping to the front, to group themselves for the final tableau—Cousin Bessie and her faithful husband are the central and leading figures; her hands are folded, and a happy, peaceful smile plays around the corners of her good-humoured face.

On one side of her stands Zita, a pretty, blushing bride, leaning on Philip Rutherby's arm; so ardent is the young bridegroom in his admiration that he threatens to spoil the whole effect, if we keep him before the public eye for very long. Louis is not with them, he has been sent away to college.

On the other side of the leading figures, Dr. and Mrs. Campbell, with a roguish gray-eyed darling, are grouped affectionately together; they all look very happy, but I think Mrs. Campbell is the most so of any. At a little distance from this last small circle stands our old friend, Girly, now grown beyond all recognition into a pleasing and promising womanhood; and away in the misty background a long-forgotten trio loom out in sombre sullenness; they are Mrs. Hampden, and Fred and the 'solicitous brother.' Fred is a hopeless dyspeptic, who can give his mind to nothing else but his digestion, which unfortunate circumstance frets his new disenchanted parent and provokes his no longer solicitous uncle.

They are all in apparent ill-humour, so we will screen them off from our laughing, happy band, as we rise to make our final curtsey and retire behind the curtain of our private, domestic lives.

THE END