"Take it out of my sight!" she cried, furiously, "and burn it!" Then, full of wrath and forebodings dire, the old lady rose and tied on the silk handkerchief with the purple border. Her head was beginning to ache violently, and her temper did not improve under this infliction. Candace had hardly gotten to the kitchen with her news, when Miss Hawkesby's bell again rang, loud and long. This time it was Miss Joanna she demanded.

"But Miss Joanna ain't here," said Candace, with an air of mystery.

"Tell

"Didn't Miss Basil come home last night?" asked Miss Hawkesby, snappishly. her I must see her immediately."

"Miss Basil didn't come home till broad day; and she hadn't been here more'n a hour or so before she was sent for to go to Mrs. Stargold, who's dying, I suppose from that; Miss Basil is always sent for to death-beds."

"Have you any more news?" said Mrs. Hawkesby, with dry severity.

"Yes'm," said Candace, briskly. "There's been a turrible storm, and Middleborough bridge is carried clean away; and people is now crossing in skifts."

"Has that any thing to do with the young ladies?" asked Miss Hawkesby, irately.

"I thought you'd like to hear, ma'am," Candace made answer, in an offended tone.

"No, I don't like to hear," said Miss Hawkesby, ungratefully. "Go ask how Mrs. Basil finds herself this morning. She was complaining last night. I suppose she, at least, is at home?"

Candace went, and returned with the information that Mrs. Basil was not at all well, and would breakfast in her own room; and the request that, as neither Miss Basil nor the young ladies were at home, Miss Hawkesby also would order her breakfast up-stairs.

"She's going round to Mrs. Stargold's herself, as soon as she feels a little strengthened," added Candace, of her own accord.

"I don't believe Elizabeth Stargold is going to die," said Miss Hawkesby to her. self; then aloud to Candace: "I'll take a cup of coffee; nothing more."

While Miss Hawkesby was drinking the coffee, she looked out of the window and saw her niece Joanna coming up the broad walk to the house. The child was pale and haggard, and had, altogether, a very disordered appearance; but Miss Hawkesby, when she saw her, hardened her heart. "If she has gotten herself up for effect, she'll find she can't impose upon me," said the old lady, aloud, as she poured herself out a second cup. But when she had had her coffee, she did not send for Joanna to come to her; she went herself to Joanna, and found her on her knees. The sight only moved her wrath.

"You do well, my young lady," she said, severely, as Joanna rose; a guilty conscience should bring you to your knees." She had no doubt whatever that Joanna had connived at Anita's flight.

"Aunt Hawkesby," said Joanna, shrinking before that awfully-stormy visage, "I deserve your displeasure; I am unworthy of all your kindness."

"Where is your sister?" asked Miss Hawkesby, sternly.

The dread question made Joanna pause, as if loath to admit in words the unwelcome truth that Anita was gone. Her eyes wandered slowly round the room, and rested at last upon a full-length painted photograph of her sister pinned against the wall, in the place of the chromo, "The Bluebird's Nest." Anita had pinned it there before she made her confession to Joanna, and had afterward forgotten it; and it had escaped Joanna's notice hitherto. But now, from where she stood, she could read the word "Farewell" penciled beneath. She covered her face with her hands, and said, faintly, "Gone!"

Miss Hawkesby, following the direction of Joanna's glance, strode up to the picture, snatched it down and tore it into fragments. Joanna uttered a cry of pain that only inflamed her aunt's anger.

"What had you to do with this pretty business, you meek-faced baby?" she cried, shaking Joanna, angrily.

I

"Aunt Hawkesby, forgive her!" said Joanna, sinking down, for she could no longer stand. "She has done wrong; but she had an evil counselor in that Miss Caruthers. tried, oh, I tried so hard to prevent it all. I went across the bridge in the storm yesterday, but I did not know Miss Caruthers when I met her. And then the bridge went down, and I couldn't get back."

"You knew it all, and you would not tell me?" said Miss Hawkesby, furiously. "I could not betray my sister," said Jo"I have done wrong, I know; but it was because I could see no way for me to do right. I could not betray my sister."

anna.

"Well, well, Joanna," said Miss Hawkesby, relenting a little, "everybody does wrong some time or other in life, and you are very young."

"And she is young, too!" cried Joanna, eagerly. "O Aunt Hawkesby, forgive her, because she is young; and you-you are old!"

But the unconscious pathos of this speech did not touch Miss Hawkesby.

"I won't forgive her!" she cried, wrathfully. "She is young, and I-am old; I thank you for reminding me, Miss Joanna Hawkesby; but for that very reason I tell you I won't forgive her. Last night Miss Anita coolly objects to my company because I snore; and this morning you remind me that I am old! A graceless pair, both of you! But I'm not in my dotage. You may write and tell Mrs. Redmond that I discard her forever; and after that, if ever you attempt to hold any communication with her, I'll discard you. Do you understand? These are the terms upon which I forgive you."

"Aunt Hawkesby! Aunt Hawkesby!" cried Joanna, with bitter tears, "she is my sister!"

Here the door was thrown open suddenly, and, to the surprise of both, Anita herself ran in, crying, “Joanna! Joanna! you child, how wretched I've been about you!"

Joanna uttered a little cry and sprang toward her; and the two threw their arms around each other, utterly regardless of old Miss Hawkesby, who stiffened and stiffened with wrath and virtuous indignation; but she had no intention of going away until she

"This young lady is under my protection, Mrs. Redmond."

"That's not my name, aunt," said Anita, coolly.

Miss Hawkesby stared.

"And why is it not your name, I should like to know? I won't have any quibbles played off upon me."

"Joanna can tell you why it isn't my name,” said Anita. "It is all her fault; she wouldn't hear to it."

"Do you mean to say that you didn't run away and get married?" asked old Miss Hawkesby, anxiously.

"No; I meant to do it, but Joanna wouldn't let me. She says people ought to be married respectably at home."

"Joanna is a wise little girl," said Miss Hawkesby, going over and kissing Joanna. "And where have you been, then, Anita?"

"Looking for Joanna," said Anita. "0 Aunt Hawkesby, all night long I have been half-wild about the fate of this child, and I dared not tell you. You don't know what danger she has gone through. She has risked her life twice in order to persuade me to be married respectably at home."

"I wish you would tell a plain story in a plain way, Anita," said Miss Hawkesby, querulously. "I'm not going to scold, child; I'm too glad to have you back. You see, I'm old, as Joanna says, and it would be a bitter thing to have the child I've reared bring derision and contempt upon my gray hairs." And Miss Hawkesby wiped her

eyes.

"So Joanna reminded me," said Anita, gently. Then, after a moment's hesitation, she put her arms around her aunt, and whispered: "Forgive me, for Joanna's sake! 0 Aunt Hawkesby, if I had never found my sister again! I lay awake all night long in agony of mind-"

“Ah, if you had only had a dose of chloral!" said Joanna.

"And then," continued Anita, “just as soon as it was day, I roused Miss Caruthers, and we went down to the river-bank. But she-well, we quarreled on the way—”

"I'm glad of that," said Miss Hawkesby; "I'm heartily glad of that."

"I don't know what became of ber-" "She's safe enough," said Joanna; "she says herself, naught is never in danger."

"That's spoken like a true Hawkesby, child," said her aunt, approvingly. "And what then?"

"And then," continued Anita, "Chancel lor Page met me, and took me into his house; and after a while Mr. Leasom came and brought me the joyful tidings of Joanna's safety."

"Well, you two girls are enough to drive a steady-minded woman crazy!" said Miss Hawkesby. "Now begin at the beginning-"

But here a violent ringing of the doorbell interrupted them, and brought Mrs. Basil out of her room in alarm. "I don't know what this may mean," said she, tremulously; "will you come with me down-stairs? I feel very feeble." So Anita and Joanna each gave Mrs. Basil an arm, and Miss Hawkesby

followed behind, bearing the ivory-headed stuff, like an usher.

The bell was speedily answered by Candace, who had been on the alert all the morning; and the doors of Basilwood opened to admit a procession of three, led by Mrs. Ruffner, flushed, agitated, and fanning herself with inelegant vigor as she trotted along. Behind her came Miss Ruffner, with her head very high, her lips compressed, and her eyes ablaze. Sam brought up the rear, lounging along with a decidedly sheepish, downcast look.

What in the name of wonder brings these people here, at this time of day?" said Miss Hawkesby to herself, as she composed her features for the occasion.

"WHAT AILS THIS HEART

THE

O' MINE?"

THE windows of a pleasant, old-fashioned house, which had evidently been closed in obedience to the summer instinct for vagabondizing, were all thrown "wide open to the sun" of an Indian-summer day in the beautiful autumn of 18-, and a young woman stood directly opposite one whose originally deep recess had been curved into the modern bow. The prospect it opened upon was as rural as one could hope to find in the respectable and shaded street of a small inland city, as it embraced lawn, greensward, and shrub.

But the maiden's eyes saw none of these; for the windows of her soul were not so much used just now for her own outlooking as for the inpeeping of the curious like ourselves. Through their transparent depths what might we not see if she would but raise them from the hurrying fixedness with which she followed, line after line, down Hawthorne's witching page?

She was not reclined upon couch or easychair, which might almost hide her slight and graceful form, as the magic veil of romance had hidden her thoughts-she was standing in a rather critical and not at all comfortable position, with one foot on the floor and one upon the lowest shelf of a tall bookcase, and from her right hand hung an ample, old-fashioned, red-silk handkerchief, such as completes a young lady's wardrobe only when she is bent upon the never-ceasing warfare with the dust of this dirty world. In fact, it was only eight o'clock in the morning, and the girl was in slippers, calico, big apron, and dusting-cap, all neat and sweet as honey in the honey-comb, to be sure, but all merely the properties, so to speak, of the drama she was enacting-a farce without the fun; for the spiders only shake out their horrid long legs and climb a little higher, and the dust only whirls around and settles a little more timidly into the old familiar places.

But on this particular morning not even the accustomed but half-forgotten tremor of perpetual moving-day had stirred the quietly obtrusive little gray particles, and the flies, which had whipped in out of the air as yet a shade too cool for their constitutional passion for being frizzled up by summer sun or win

ter lamp, were having an uproarious buzzmeeting over the reopening of their favorite south-window, untroubled by the whipping out which a limp red rag not far away could do.

For the little creatures well knew the habits of its wielder, and they had seen that in lifting her pretty foot upon the lower shelf, so that with a skillful flirt of her great dustcloth she could sweep a cobweb out of the sky, she had thrown the emblem of cleanliness in such fashion that a corner of its ample folds caught upon the card-board and blue-riboned surface of a book-mark which told her heart of a favorite passage in a favorite book, and, while her right hand lowered the battle-flag of purity, her left hand drew down the volume, and the world was clean and beautiful at once, or, if it was not, it made no difference. Soft, gray plumes, the broken homes of the cunning, keen-eyed workers in the air, formidable dust-mounds, might float or darken around her:

"She heeds not, she hears not,

She's free from all pain." Her check is pale and her eye brimming with the delight which her intellect receives and her heart fancies. As she thrills with the heroine, Hope whispers that her own life may be yet stronger and more blissful.

“Myra, what are you up to? I thought you said you could finish dusting in five minutes, and help me to set out the croquet."

With a little start the girl's face was lifted hastily toward the handsome youth who, brushing aside a vine that had outgrown its trellis, was leaning in upon the window-sill.

Her cheek mantled with something like shame; but her brown eyes lost the warmth which they had gathered in the land of far

romance.

66

Why will you vex me so forever?" continued Elmer's impatient voice. "Dreamland again, and I, poor wretch! still dancing attendance on a will-o'-the-wisp. It isn't the first time a befogged traveler has followed at breakneck speed a shining something which he fondly trusted was the light of a cozy home."

Myra blushed again, and this time more consciously. The metaphor was too forcible to pass for nothing, even with her modesty, and the manner of putting it was very different from the old grumbling fashion of talking which she had pooh-poohed a hundred times before. Besides, the girl's heart was as sensitive as a touch-me-not, and it quivered at the hint of a something unmaidenly which the hide-and-seek figure seemed to imply. At that thought the pride which acquitted her of so false a charge came to her relief, and she answered:

"Elmer Halstead, it is a pretty thing for you to be getting sentimental. We have spent too many bright days playing tag for you to become a befogged traveler at sight of me. Save that little rhetoric for some girl who hasn't run over' so many times to see if you couldn't come out and play school."

She spoke gayly; but there was some hidden uneasiness through it all, and somehow she could not coax up the old amused smile when Elmer cried out, half petulantly, half commandingly:

"I suppose your imaginary hero must come from the uttermost parts of the earth, and take you captive with a single glance of his eagle-eye. An old playmate for a lover! How unromantic! What would become of the cherished dream of love at first sight if the commonplace love of years should be allowed a hearing?"

"I suppose it would have about as much effect as usual to tell you once more that I haven't any imaginary hero; that so far in my life it is women and not men who interest me-"

"Yes," interrupted Elmer, "you overdo matters in the other direction from a certain girl who need not be named. She never chances to allude to her own sex without a spiteful little fling, while you do not despise exactly, but just ignore, all men except as they may be of use for such women as George Eliot and Mrs. Browning to work up scenes with, and may be convenient to hand the coming woman out of her chariot when she arrives in this man-cursed land. Sincerely, Myra, you admit this one-sided reverence?"

"I don't know, Elmer-I truly do not know. I certainly don't deserve what you have just been hateful enough to say; but, somehow, I cannot understand men, and when I read about them I never feel sure that they are painted to the life. I would rather not be bothered thinking about them anyway."

"That's just it, Myra; you do not understand them because you will not take the trouble. O my beautiful, my dearest friend, if you would give a little serious thought to the nature and needs of one man, he could afford to let you go crazy about women for the rest of a happy life. In fact, I know his jealous disposition so well, that I can swear he would wish you to carry your studies of men no further. But what's the use of wasting hope and breath?" he added. "I have never forgotten the tone in which you said that a pretty boy could always find a comforter.' I tell you I am a boy no longer. Have you ever thought so?"

"I tell you frankly, Elmer, that I have thought so lately, very lately, but I have realized it only through a new shrinking from your passionate fancies and words, and it is that which makes me bold to tell you that you must turn the feelings which can strengthen with your strength toward some one who will not disappoint you continually one less cold and unsympathetic-what you would call 'more womanly.'"

- some

As these words fell from her full yet delicate lips, and as the deep, soft tone in which she uttered them stirred the fragrant air about them, the young man felt a dim apprehension that the revelation he had been endeavoring to make of her own nature to his heart's idol was somehow shallow and mistaken. Could it be that it was he and not she who failed to read the whole? At all events, just as it always was, he loved her more wildly now than five minutes ago, and yet what was the result of her brief answer? Was he nearer to her? No. The blushing, half-yielding repulsion with which she had met him until this moment was more hopeful than this new frankness. “Elmer, I have thought so." He would rather she were ut

terly thoughtless and yet tolerant of his love

once more.

What could he say that should give him some vantage-ground? What could he do that should remove the hateful barrier his folly had raised between them? Nothing now, poor fellow; for the garden-gate was creaking on its hinges, and the world which delighted to play the marplot would soon be looking in. He had only time to say, before the interruption, "Will you go down the river with the party this afternoon if I call at three o'clock?"

"Yes," said Myra, and he was gone, leaving her with dust-cloth still in hand and still dreaming; but her position was strangely changed. Her mind, as well as her body, had seemed to cross over to the light when Elmer's face appeared at that window opposite. And yet, did she really understand any better what her life must do with his? She had told him a new thing, to be sure, or, at least, an old thing in a very different way; but were the emotions that were growing into a struggle hushed? She could not tell.

Mechanically, she shook the dust-cloth, which had far less need than should be, out upon the gilded air, and the act so recalled her that she shook off with it fancies and facts, and in a minute more there was a general shaking up of "all things ca'nel," and it was dinner-time before her aunt was able to put her head in and say that that room was ready and regulated."

At three o'clock Myra was ready, but far from regulated. She longed for one moment to gather lost courage and compose her topsey-turvey emotions. And why should she need to calm herself? why were her emotions upset? and what possible excuse could she give to her own intelligence and womanly pride for such an idiotic state of things? Here was a boy-no, not a boy, a man, why should she shrink from the word?-whom she had known from babyhood, who had always liked her, and who she had no reason to suppose liked her much better this moment than ever, and, even if he did, what matter? She had never felt in her deepest nature that he was congenial to her, and she had not a distant dream of allowing him to misunderstand that fact. Her heart acquitted her of any thing insincere or unwomanly; indeed, she knew that she had always been almost brusque in her truthfulness, and that every word might do her honor, so far as purity and honesty of sentiment were concerned. And yet, and yet, she could often have torn out her cheeks for blushing like a silly girl or a lovesick damsel; and a thousand unintentional acts would haunt her, which in another would have looked like desperate flirtation or desperate love. What was it? What could it be? This day she would conquer this silliest of weaknesses before she completely loathed herself.

All this while she tied on her hat-strings; for thought is swifter than the moments of Old Time, and when we leave this mechanical measurement of our days the most skillful thinker will be seen to have the longest life. And this time it was an accustomed track over which the poor girl's mind was flying. It had all been passed over between the

sound of Elmer's voice at the gate and the rushing up-stairs of one of the gay party.

The three flocked down again in very disorderly fashion; for, from some unknown cause, three people seemed to set all the proprieties at defiance. Two girls fall into delightful tête-à-tête, but three girls can only plan mischief. Conversation is destroyed, and nonsense instantly fills up the gap. So two of the girls began to giggle immoderately after a snickering little whisper with each other, and Myra was left to follow them with a troubled look unusual to her.

"Here is something we found among Myra's treasures, Mr. Halstead," said Clara Pearson, one of the girls. "She intends to throw it at your feet to-day, with the old symbolism of defiance," she added, as she flung to the floor in front of him Elmer's glove, dropped that morning in the bow-window, and carried off by Myra to avoid the foolish jokes of the household, to which she was becoming sensitive.

The instant Myra appeared on the stairs she had seen in Elmer's eye a new expression of eager watchfulness, and this little incident, although a mere nothing to the torment which daily gossip was inflicting, added to it-completed the work of confusion. She blushed, and cast her eyes down in sheepish misery, depressing herself and abominating the silly girls who giggled at what they considered their triumphant joke. Yesterday Elmer would have turned off the matter; but to-day his own feelings were too keenly alive, and it followed too singularly upon Myra's morning remark to him, and he only said:

"I shall not pick it up. Is it true, My

ra?"

66

Am I accustomed to send my challenges, Elmer?" she answered, and, leaving the glove untouched, they left the house.

Wandering along the pleasantest streets, they picked up recruits of young men and maidens, and then wended laughing on their way, the incident unknown to most and forgotten by all but two, who were making the kind of struggle to seem to have forgotten it which is the surest evidence of failure.

Winding and picturesque was the footpath that skirted the dusty road, till it turned away to the forked and flowing "Murmuretta," as the girls had named it; and, when the rush of its fall and the babbling sound of its broken shallows met their ears, they paused to pay tribute to the sweet-toned

stream.

The banks were glorious with the beauty that comes only with passing life and fading loveliness. The spray of the fall misted rainbows in the mellow light, and earth and air seemed to have hushed their quiet noises to drink in the beauties of light and color.

They clambered down the banks and sat upon the rocks, and sunned themselves "for all the world like a party of clams, even to the open mouths," said Myra.

With pleasant talk and laughter they rose and sauntered toward the river's broader and stiller sweep, where the little barks were swaying to and fro the length of their musical chains; for the old boatman knew where they would want to ship for the "Islands of the Blessed," the "Siren's Rock,"

and other fancifully-named places as sweet and dangerous.

As they reached the landing the tormenting discoverer of the glove exclaimed:

"When we reach this landing there is always the most delightful uncertainty about the disposition of the crews. Only one thing is an unfailing certainty. Mr. Halstead and Myra De Lancy will be in the same boat; so wouldn't matters be facilitated if they stepped in and sailed at once for the Kingdom of Ponemah, for the Land of the Hereafter, toward which we are bound?"

"All the rest are bound to the Land of

Heretofore, I suppose. And certainly you are growing silly enough to turn babies again," said Myra.

"What do you say, Myra?" said Elmer. "Forward with me, or backward with the rest of the world?”

"Forward forever, I should have thought from every instinct of my nature; but when the question has actually been put, there is a strange longing to return to the days when no decisions vex us," she answered, playfully; but the absolute truthfulness of her words only she could guess, while their plainness gave her a needed relief.

"Don't shrink from the inevitable, Myra, especially when it comes in such pleasant guise. We girls are all dying of envy-or should be, if other beaux were not so plenty," continued the girls, as they laughingly seized her, and almost put her into the dainty bark.

According to the contraries which things love to go by, the legend "Coquette" was painted in flaming colors upon the little vessel's side.

"Is it a bitter sarcasm or a hated truth?" said the sensitive Myra to herself, as she gathered her drapery and settled her self upon the seat with a kind of hopeless feeling that, after all her heroic struggles, perhaps the laughed - at rhymes were true, and life was a river, and man a little bark floating down the stream" with the drifting current. What, then, would become of her? Should she sail to the haven of her dreams, or be dashed upon the rocks of an unknown misery?

She hardly heard the light laughter of the other crews as they launched thoughtlessly for fairy-land. There was something singularly earnest in the stroke of Elmer's oar, and fancy might have thought that he was a bold buccaneer fleeing to a familiar covert with his heart's stolen treasure. It was the desperate pull of his right arm that had affected her quick imagination.

Is that Elmer Halstead and Myra De Lancy, or Captain Kidd and Hildebrand's fair daughter in The Skeleton in Armor??" said one of the other rowers, with a fancy blending toward weird tales of the "wild New England shore."

"They are strangely changed," said another. "I would not like to make a third in their society to-day."

Elmer pulled fiercely past the shores where he and Myra had dreamed away many a summer hour, without a thought in either breast of a day when the heart of one should seem mocked by the light which flooded their beautiful slopes-a light which was flame

color, and yet burned not-and the heart of the other should seem mocked by the wave which forever stirred to every faint impression, and which closed upon itself without a lasting trace. Myra wondered how she ever could have thought the oar-dip melodious; now it seemed like the dull tread of feet that never could reach a resting place, but must forever rise and sink in view of shores that must be unattained. Her heart beat with the falling stroke, and her life seemed stilled within her till the sound should cease. Suddenly it did cease, and she dared not look at the youth before her, who had at last seemed to lift the frail thing that separated her from the yielding, unimpassioned water at every turn of his strong wrist.

"Myra," said he, "if I upset you, would you throw yourself into my arms for protection? You have no other recourse."

No answer.

"Myra "a little more softly-" my arm is very strong; my feet can walk those waves I saw you shrink from. Could you trust them? Would you?"

No answer.

"Myra, you wouldn't sink with my help at hand. You would rather give your life to my keeping-tell me, tell me that you would!"

The waves, the boat, the shores, the clouds, the very sun, hushed and bent themselves to listen; but no answer came.

"Are you spellbound, Myra, or before you will speak at all shall I tell you all I mean? It seems like this to me: Life is before us, with its smooth surface and its hidden dangers. Circumstance has set us in the same frail bark, and so I solemnly believe it was intended. I am strong, strangely strong, it seems to me, when I think of you as a treasure to be safely borne. I know, I feel, that I can carry you without a wreck; but, Myra, if you trust to any one less devoted, less eager to save you at any cost, can you be sure of escaping the treacherous and fatal rocks? I long to take your dreamy nature and make a solid resting-place for it, so that it can dream on and never have a rude awaking. I believe you are almost heavenly, and yet, somehow, I cannot so much woo you as tell you that I must hear from your lips the assurance that you will be mine. I must now be doubly sure of that of which I will not feel uncertain—that you will be my wife, my own forever. O Myra, remember this is no time for the caprice which has tried me a thousand times. I am in earnest. My soul is listening, and you must answer with your own."

A pair of white lips moved, but no sound came. Again they stirred.

"Elmer," they said, "you are so cruel that I believe I hate you. I feel as if I should die, and I almost hope it; for I can never answer you, and I cannot believe you think I ever gave you cause for such words."

Two blanched faces were uplifted, two pairs of eyes, full of agony, gazed each into the other.

"Elmer! Elmer Halstead! where are you going? What are you thinking about? Don't you know the strong side - current there, and the sunk rocks?" rang sharply across the water.

Too late! Too late! At the instant came a grating, crushing sound, and, with a drawing as of some mighty and resistless hand beneath, the waves closed over boasted strength and conscious weakness.

ance.

As they felt the horrible sucking of the water, to Myra it was but the fitting close of her despair, to Elmer it was a fearful awakening to the vision of his own foolhardiness, violence, and unintentional brutality. In his inmost heart he knew that Myra did not fully love him; but his untrained nature had determined upon the wild experiment of leaving her no escape which would not be harder for her sensitive soul than an acceptAfter that he would be gentleness itself, and she would love him in her inmost being. He had not dreamed of such a course until that very morning, but suddenly she had suggested a possible determined defiance, and his fierce soul could not brook it. She must be made his before she had time to study her heart more, and ventured to act upon her new knowledge. Her ignorance had been his hope. Her long and thoughtless reliance upon him must serve him once more in place of perfect affection, and that once must be the fatal time.

Was it to be the fatal time, indeed? It seemed so. And Elmer's better nature woke with such a bound that he really hardly dared touch the drowning girl whom but a moment before he could almost have held beneath the water until she had promised to be his. He could not speak to her-the fervent names he called her in his dreams died away unuttered as he clutched her and lifted her into the sunshine of the upper world once more. Lifeless she lay upon his arm, simply supported, while the boat that had hailed them drew near with its horrified occupants. The strong man who thought to walk the waves if only he might carry such a burden, just sinking under the task of keeping it where life could find it, had hardly power to help lift her precious weight into the saving bark. He climbed in and took Myra's dripping form as the rowers turned silently down-stream, not to the landing from which they came, │ but to the little settlement below, where they could obtain a carriage.

mented upon before the next day's light had dawned upon the principal actors in the scene. But Myra's old-fashioned aunt was a person whom gossip could not approach; and, as it was one of her boasts that she was "still of her tongue," Myra was suffered to regain strength of body and calmness of mind as quickly as she might.

Elmer's invalid sister Alice had a warm place in the heart which her jealous brother so coveted, and as often as her health admitted she went to Myra's quiet room; and, although nothing was said of the cause of the accident, the fact that her presence was especially soothing to her assured the sister that her poor, wretched brother was not to Myra the hateful object which he conceived himself.

In this blessed quietness of her painful sick-room Myra had tried to re-read her heart. At first the manner of its expression made Elmer's passion for her so repulsive that she could not think of it without a shudder. But gradually she saw more clearly its depth and reality, and she realized the chafing effect of her own conduct upon one so hot-headed and sensitive. She had been wayward, but the how or the why she could not understand. Her own heart was her strangest puzzle. Trifled with him she never had, but she was conscious of having been drawn toward or repelled by him in a fashion that her judg ment could not approve of. A thousand times she questioned, "Do I love him?" "Why do I not love him?" "Can I make myself responsible for his life without my promise? ""Dare I make myself responsible for his life with my promise given but unfulfilled?" "It must be that I should love him with all my heart." "It may be that I never can."

Across this questioning would flash the memory of that frightful scene, and she would shut her eyes tightly to keep out the agonizing remembrance.

Out of all this musing came a little note, with which Alice was intrusted. It ran thus:

"ELMER: After those days of searching, I am more puzzled to know what I am made of than I ever was in my most contradictory talk with you. If I have any emotion toward you

He could not speak to her or touch her beyond the absolute necessity of supporting her. How could he ever even think of her again? Her beautiful hair lay wet and matted on her brow, but less guilty hands than his must smooth it back. In that short ride he was absolutely racked with horror and remorse; and, as he laid her down in the home her presence had made so joyous, it seemed that his heart must burst with anguish.

"The morn may come with weeping,
The winds may cease to blow,
But the gay Coquette is sleeping
A thousand fathoms low."

News of the accident spread through the town, and a hundred representations and misrepresentations had been made and com

you to death with its tameness, and that I have not even that I feel certain when I think with what delight I look forward to trying alone to carry out some cherished plans of study and cultivation. I don't hope to be a 'princess,' or an 'Aurora Leigh,' who, by-the-way, were both women, after all; but I do want to devote every energy to branches that men have no sympathy with women for delighting in, and your feeling for me is far too exacting for such a purpose.

"Unsatisfactory as this is, it is all I have to say, and it is far more than I should ever dream of saying did I not feel absolutely certain that the frightful past is even more painful to you in remembrance than it is to me. But, at least, Elmer, if your words were wild and wrong, mine were too horrible to win my own forgiveness. I do not grant mine to you, or ask yours for myself; for, somehow,