"Long years, long years have passed away,

And altered is thy brow;

And we who met so fondly once

Must meet as strangers now.

The friends of yore come 'round me still,

But talk no more of thee,

'Twere idle e'en to wish it now,

For what art thou to me?"

"Yet still thy name--thy blessed name!

My lonely bosom fills,

Like an echo that hath lost itself

Among the distant hills,

That still, with melancholy note,

Keeps faintly lingering on,

When the joyous sound that woke it first

Is gone--forever gone!"

"A neat conceit that last verse, and the music is a fair imitation

of a dying bugle-echo!" said Winston Aylett to himself, resuming the

writing he had suspended for a minute. "That girl should take to the

stage. If one did not know better, her eyes and singing together

would delude him into the idea that she had a heart. Honest Alfred

evidently believes that she has, and that the patient labor of love

will win it for himself. Bah!"

Frederic and Mabel retired noiselessly from their post of

observation, as "honest Alfred" made a motion to take in his the

hand lying prone and passive upon the finger-board. They exchanged a

smile, significant and tender, in withdrawing.

"We understand the signs of the times," whispered Frederic, at the

upper turn of their promenade. "Heaven bless all true lovers under

the sun!"

"Don't!" said Rosa, vehemently, snatching away her hand from her

suitor's hold. "Leave me alone! If you touch me again I shall

scream! I think you were made up without nerves, either in the heart

or in the brain--if you have any!"

Before the aghast Alfred rallied from the recoil occasioned by her

gesture and words, her feet were pattering over the oaken hall and

staircase in rapid retreat to her chamber.

"You are really happy, then?" queried Mabel. "Quite content?"

"Did I not tell you awhile ago that I was not satisfied?" returned

Chilton. "Two months since I should, in anticipation of this hour,

have declared that it would be fraught with unalloyed rapture. I was

happier yesterday than I am to-day. It is not merely that we must

part to-morrow, or that your brother's precautionary measures and

disapproval of what has passed between us have acted like a

shower-bath to the fervor of my newly born hopes. I am willing that

my life should be subjected to the utmost rigor of his researches,

and another month, at farthest, will reunite us. Nor do I believe in

presentiments. I am more inclined to attribute the uneasiness that

has hovered over me all the day to physical causes. We will call it

a mild splenetic case, induced by the sultry weather, and the very

slow on coming of the storm presaged by your dewless roses."




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