"I wish she was not coming, or anybody else. Getting married is a bore!"
Ethelyn exclaimed, while Aunt Barbara looked curiously enough at her,
wondering, for the first time, if the girl's heart were really in this
marriage, which for weeks had been agitating the feminine portion of
Chicopee, and for which so great preparations had been made.
Wholly honest and truthful and sincere herself, Aunt Barbara seldom
suspected wrong in others, and so when Ethelyn, one April night, after a
drive around the road which encircles Pordunk Pond, came to her and
said, "Congratulate me, auntie, I am to be Mrs. Judge Markham," she had
believed all was well, and that as sister Sophia Van Buren, of Boston,
had so often averred, there was not, nor ever had been, anything serious
between dandyish Frank, Mrs. Van Buren's only son, who parted his curly
hair in the middle, and the high-spirited, impulsive Ethelyn, whose eyes
shone like stars as she told of her engagement, and whose hand was icy
cold as she held it up to the lamp-light to show the large diamond which
flashed from the fourth finger as proof of what she said. The stone
itself was of the first water, but the setting was old, so old that a
connoisseur in such matters might wonder why Judge Markham had chosen
such a ring as the seal of his betrothal. Ethelyn knew why, and the
softest, kindliest feeling she had experienced for her promised husband
was awakened when he told her of the fair young sister whose name was
Daisy, and who for many years had slept on the Western prairie beneath
the blossoms whose name she bore. This young girl, loving God with all
her soul, loved too all the beautiful things he had made, and rejoiced
in them as so much given her to enjoy. Brought up in the far West, where
the tastes of the people were simpler than those of our Eastern
neighbors, it was strange, he said, how strong a passion she possessed
for gems and precious stones, especially the diamond. To have for her
own a ring like one she once saw upon a grand Chicago lady was her great
ambition, and knowing this the brother hoarded carefully his own
earnings, until enough was saved to buy the coveted ring, which he
brought to his young sister on her fourteenth birthday. But death even
then had cast its shadow around her, and the slender fingers soon grew
too small for the ring, which she nevertheless kept constantly by her,
admiring its brilliancy, and flashing it in the sunlight for the sake of
the rainbow hues it gave. And when, at last, she lay dying in her
brother's arms, with her golden head upon his breast, she had given back
the ring, and said, "I am going, Richard, where there are far more
beautiful things than this: 'for eye hath not seen, neither hath it
entered into the heart of man, the things prepared for those who love
Him,' and I do love Him, brother, oh! so much, and feel His arms around
me now as sensibly as I feel yours. His will stay after yours are
removed, and I am done with earth; but keep the ring, Brother Dick, and
when in after years you love some pure young girl as well as you love
me, only different--some girl who will prize such things, and is worthy
of it--give it to her, and tell her it was Daisy's; tell her for me, and
that I bade her love you, as you deserve to be loved."