shadow of herself; like the rose after, not a shower but a storm, its bloom and its life almost fled-all but its sweetness: so she seemed to me.” "How I should like to see her! I spoke to Lady-Bird about it, but she was not encouraging." "Dear Lady Clara, there are many drooping flowers in the world that you can revive by your presence, but this one is trembling on its stem, and even a breath might be fatal." "But I would breathe so gently?" "Do not try experiments, especially where you know not how sore memory may be." "I think I might do good." He smiled and said, "Our old dispute, more anxious to do good than afraid of doing harm.” "Yes, I adhere to my opinion.-By the way have I spoiled Lady-Bird as you predicted? Is she not more charming than ever?” "Quite charming enough, Heaven knows! What is there about that girl that enchants one so much? I feel it too much to define it." "O she is Lady-Bird, that is all I know,-she is the most high bred of untamed creatures,― the most gently wild, the most femininely bold, the most innocently mischievous of human beings. What a bird to have caught M. d'Arberg! What a prize to have found under a tree in the park At that moment, Mrs. Crofton and Mr. Latimer joined them, and scolding in his usual manner, he exclaimed, "Why have you let Lady-Bird What do you go? I can't do without her. mean by letting her go?" "It is like the story of the House that Jack built," Lady Clara answered. "She must go to her mother, whose uncle is going to Spain, whose nephew has broken his leg, whose father is coming home home" "What, what's all that? Who has broken his leg?" "Lady-Bird's brother, the heir of all the Liffords." "Confound the boy! he is always breaking his leg." Lady Clara and Adrien laughed, but Mr. Latimer was really cross, and walked away repeating: "It is quite true-she is always going away; they never keep a pleasant person here two days together. Those Miss Apleys, I dare say, will stay us all out." Mrs. Crofton smiled as she looked at him with her spying-glass, and cried, "O blest with temper whose unclouded ray CHAPTER VII. "Ours was love indeed, No childish day-dream, but a life intense Within our hearts; we spoke not of our love, In the intense absorbing happiness Of mutual long, long looks, as if our souls Held sweet communion through our passionate eyes." "And is he gone? On sudden solitude How oft that fearful question will intrude! 'Twas but an instant passed! and here he stood, And now!-Without the portal's porch she rushed; For in that word, that fatal word, howe'er We promise, hope, believe, there breathes despair." BYRON. GERTRUDE arrived in time to take leave of Father Lifford, and had a long conversation with him before he went. In the evening she took her work, and sat down by the sofa where her mother was dozing; it had been a great emotion to her to part with her best and only friend, and as she slept Gertrude could see by her swollen eyelids that she had been weeping. She longed for her to wake, for she had that to tell her that would make her weep again, perhaps, but from a different feeling. Her own heart was fluttering with happiness; the sort of nervous misgiving which had troubled her joy, at the moment of the realisation of her hopes, had passed away. Her confidence in the future was now as great as her diffidence had been. She thought of herself as Adrien's wife. She wrote on a paper, in her work-box, the signature that would be one day hers, "Gertrude d'Arberg," and then tore up the paper hastily, as if she had been doing something wrong. Instead of going on with the lily she was embroidering, she worked Adrien's name on her canvass, and then unpicked it. She pictured to herself his chateau in Brittany; her arrival in the "plaisant pays de France;" the share she |