Ethelyn's Mistake

"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."