range of her reflective experience, until I could not but wonder at the brilliancy of talents which needed but the hand of cultivation to resemble genius. From such daily associations with her I began to derive a new, indefinite pleasure in remarking the enthusiasm of this tireless scholar, which threw a charm around the dryest elements of science. By constant

sympathy with the earnest rapture of the girl, I grew into a deeper admiration of herself. By degrees I forgot, in contemplating her extraordinary talents, her humble station, until I felt that she had created for herself an interest in my heart that could never be destroyed. And so she grew, by delicate degrees, through pity, interest, and admiration, up into the higher regions of respect and love.

Thus sped the term. My patrons, pleased at the beneficial change in school, extended my probation two months beyond the usual time; but the hours of that period ran goldenly away into oblivion until at last it came-the day which was to close my term-and within a short time after which I was to take my place in a law office in a distant city. The May, beautiful May, had long been in, and the breath of her greening meadows and adolescent blossoms melted in at the open windows where I was holding my last day's school session. But, not to linger, I had given the last encouragement which I was ever to offer in that humble room; the trustees and patrons had shaken my hand in rude congratulations on my success; the little ones had given me the last reluctant palm, and the larger ones had spoken the last tearful "good-by;" and I sat, resting my forehead in my hand, gazing vacantly away into the supernal glory of the western sky, with an unaccustomed sadness on my brow and a regretful melancholy at my heart. I was sad at my release from what most would have deemed an irksome task. Yet wherefore? Why should I regret to exchange this humble sphere of action for one broader and more promising? this tiresome round of petty duties for the varied and exciting scenes of active life? Why should I be reluctant to leave these barren hills, untenanted save by the brown and antiquated dwelling of the husbandman, for the gay delights and fashionable splendors of city life, where art, made prodigal by wealth, adds to the magnificence of taste the luxury of Oriental climes? Here taste was simple, customs rude; whither I was going elegance and fashion reigned, and beauty spread her thousand fascinations. Then why was I reluctant? Perhaps, as I inquired, my heart made answer to itself;

but its answer was unheeded, for a shadow fell across my face and a cluster of fragrant early wild flowers dropped upon the desk. I glanced upward, and beheld the graceful figure of Maggie Fulmer. She was clad in a far better dress than common, and the masses of her magnificent hair fell round a face flushed deep with exercise, and eyes that burned with more than their accustomed melancholy splendor. As I met their searching gaze, it was in effect as if, by the sudden flame of some volcano, I had been shown the chaotic features of the passion living in the caverns of my heart. That speechless glance revealed it all, and I felt it to be their influence which bound me so inseparably to the scenes which I was quitting. Gazing upon the child-genius and emancipated scholar, I half persuaded myself that the preceding hour had expanded the frail figure of the girl into the ripe proportions of full womanhood. Indeed, I almost read in her mute gaze a recognition of the passion which consumed me. Rising, I took the little hand of Maggie, and led her to a western window. Winding my arms about her slender figure, I said, in tones much calmer than the heart which prompted them :

"Maggie, I am no longer your teacher. When that sun sets, I shall have seen you for the last time, perhaps, on earth. Are you

sorry?"

I read my answer in the tears that glistened in the uplifted eyes.

"Then, Maggie, you can understand why I regret to leave you. I am going very far away; but you will remember me, will you not, Maggie, and write to me that I may know you do? Will you do this, Maggie?"

How I loved to dwell on the repetition of that name, which seemed to embody all things of sound and meaning which I loved! And how I longed for something more than the convulsive pressure of the hand which answered me! A desperate desire for an affectionate word possessed me as I watched the slow-rolling tears that marked her grief.

"Maggie," I whispered, "do you understand what it is to love?"

"I hardly know," she said, mournfully. "No one cares for the love of Maggie, the drunkard's child!" The rolling tears were swelled to torrents now, and her bosom heaved fearfully with convulsive sobs.

"You must not, shall not cherish such thoughts," I said; "there are many who would prize your love, my girl. I, Maggie, I would give worlds to know you love me."

"If to think of you always, and always as a

star-pure, high, and far away-be love, I love you now," said the strange being at my side. "But you are learned and proud, and I must not bring you nearer in my thoughts."

"And why not?" cried I, passionately. "Oh, Maggie! dearest Maggie! let me come nearer to your heart, until I enter it forever. Tell me you love me now; and some time, when you shall have outlived these girlhood troubles, we may realize this dream together!"

"Ah!" said Maggie, releasing herself gently from my arms, and speaking in a tone of unutterable pain, "I am too young, too poor, too wretched to love any one. Oh, if I could only die!" And she hid her face once more in her hands, and sobbed long and fearfully.

"Nay, live, dear Maggie!" I exclaimed. "I will come back to you, darling, and if these clouds have not dispersed, I will carry my Maggie off to a land where it is always sunlight. Will you not love me ever, Maggie ?" I asked, clasping her to my heart.

"Always!" she sobbed, "even in my unworthiness," she added, smiling through her tears. "And I will write until you weary of my letters."

A few words more, and I stood alone at the window, watching with tumultuous emotions the form of Maggie as she wound along the grassy highway in the distance. She looked back at intervals along the lonely road, as one might look back mournfully upon some receding hope; and when the last flutter of her dress had disappeared, I left that house forever.

CHAPTER II.

FROM the closing events of the preceding chapter we must stride forward twelve years. What unexpected changes these twelve years had wrought in my own fortune! Through all the grades of "lawyerdom," from that of a simple copyist of deeds up to the satisfactory condition of a legal "limb," in verity, with an extensive practice, I had passed, and had finally come into the enjoyment, whether merited or not, of a handsome reputation as an advocate. During the year or two next succeeding the season which I spent in Smalley, I sustained a regular and frequent correspondence with Maggie. In all her letters were to be found occasional passages indicating the untaught wealth of a mind struggling to pour into the moulded patterns of expression the impressive fancies so peculiarly its own; but Maggie generally failed to communicate to the lifeless letters the

simple eloquence which, when falling from her gifted tongue, and receiving an added spell from her mysterious beauty, had so often startled me like an electric shock. Accustomed, while in her presence, to connect the music of her words with her striking personal exterior, I had forgotten until I came to read the irregu lar epistles, in which the defects of her education were apparent, that she was, after all, but a crude child of misfortune, comparativelynay, almost wholly destitute of those accomplishments which, if not the origin of love, are about the only aliment on which it can subsist. I was not long in concluding that my humble wall-flower, which had seemed so strangely brilliant from its coarse and rude surroundings, would, if transplanted to a fashionable parlor, appear a very ordinary blossom, the essence of rusticity. By degrees this impression, at first admitted suspiciously and with self-reproach, grew familiar to my mind, and I came to contrast our different positions and the probable unlikeness of our tastes and habits, until I tacitly concluded that to look upon Maggie Fulmer in a dearer light than as a valued friend would be rank injustice to us both. I had not outlived the memory of the words I had spoken when we parted, but gradually settled into a habit of thought that looked upon it as a boyish extravagance which she as well as I would eventually forget. And yet, at times, when some vivid reminiscence fell glowing from her pen, there would steal over me a temporary shadow of the same fever-dream, always relapsing, however, into that common type of thought in which the Maggie of old was a fabulous creature-bright, but indistinct; and sweet, but most unreal. As a friend, however, I could not but do her reverence; the thought of dropping her acquaintance was never for a moment entertained. The place she occupied in my esteem, and which in former seasons had appeared to be the highest station there, seemed lower as I grew in mental stature; but it was still far too elevated to be looked upon except with feelings of respect and admiration. Thus it came that I still maintained a correspondence with Maggie, while slowly from the ragged scrawl of the school-girl and the meagre language in which her earlier written thoughts were clothed, her hand had gained a cunning with the pen, and her style had acquired a chasteness and coherency plainly an improvement on her earlier efforts, when suddenly she sank into impenetrable silence. I had already written her several unanswered letters, and many weeks had passed away before I learned,

in answer to some inquiries which I had instituted in her neighborhood, that, in company with her family, she had removed no one knew whither. All efforts to ascertain the new location of my girlish favorite were fruitless. For several months this circumstance occasioned me considerable inquietude, and formed a subject of constant speculation; but new opening prospects drew my thoughts aside, until, finally, the matter ceased to be a daily topic of thought. Occasionally, it is true, I reverted, speculatively, to the antiquated theatre on which so brief and sweet a drama of boyish life had been enacted; but manhood's stirring incentives urged me onward, forward into a partial forgetfulness of every dream save that ambition weaves. Wealth, distinction lay before me, and I entered, with a natural zest, these new, exciting fields of action.

In these pursuits ten years went by, and found me, at the age of thirty, a citizen of Rwith a comfortable fortune and a constantly enlarging professional practice. Millions are born and die to whom the higher paths of social progress are sealed forever; but for me they had no barrier; and yet, though for years I had mingled in circles where every feminine accomplishment and artifice combine to render female beauty irresistible, I had as yet escaped heartwhole. Perhaps the recollection of Maggie Fulmer was not least among the safeguards which exempted me from after passions, for it is certain that there arose at times from the unsounded gulfs of memory, where the beloved are buried, a wizard countenance, whose unique and supernal beauty resembled the beauty of a spectre, and before whose lofty charms all common fairness seemed but imperfection, for it burned with the sublime reflection of a gifted soul. However this may be, I had never, thus far, gazed on loveliness which could compare with the capricious shadow that visited my dreams.

But to return. Assiduous confinement to business was fast exhausting me, and it was with an eager feeling of relief that I accepted a professional call promising to detain me several weeks in the comparatively rural city of B. Perhaps no summer songster ever turned from the far southland at the call of spring, to revisit its familiar groves and cleave again with willing wing its native atmosphere, more exultantly than did I speed rapidly away from the bustle of the town, and approach the haven of respite. No feeling is so inspiring after protracted bondage as the sense of personal freedom; and when I trod the pavements of Bit was for

the time with a supreme indifference to all time, past and future, and a complete absorption in the present. Society, in this retired town, possessed a genial freshness unknown to the conventional crowds of fashionable R, and I entered with enthusiasm into every scheme which could promise enjoyment. In rambles and excursions amongst its surrounding forests, lakes, and rivers, and in cordial intercourse with its hospitable people, the brief season allotted to these unalloyed enjoyments melted insensibly away, until the necessity for my return to business stared me in the face, and revealed the unconscious zeal which I had thrown into my recreations. Not least among the many ties formed, even in so brief a period, was that of an acquaintance with one of the most fascinating women I had ever met. In the social world of B― mingled many beautiful and queenly creatures, but among them there was one whose loveliness outshone all others; and yet the spell surrounding Mary Seymour was not simply referable to mere personal beauty. True, a world of symmetry dwelt in the tall and stately figure, the contour of the intellectual features, and a world of sensuous beauty in the lustrous hair, and in the sweet expression of a mouth as daintily and delicately chiselled as a rainbow; but it was a something not wholly tangible, that dwelt in the unfathomable, soundless eyes, and swallowed up all considerations of mere outward beauty. Accustomed as I had been long to estimate the attractions of women with the cool analysis of a critic, I at first met Miss Seymour with the indifference with which, in my opinion, all feminine charms were most safely treated. This opinion, however, was, within a little time, materially revised. I found her differing widely in all the cardinal points of character from any woman I had ever seen. It was neither the rumor of her princely wealth, the vision of her wonderful perfection, nor the magic of her countless accomplishments that set at fault my preconceived conclusions; it was something higher, more spiritual than those, which exercised at once an attracting and repelling influence upon all who entered the enchanted circle of her presence. Dazzled by the blaze of attractions that I could not analyze, it is no wonder that I yielded passively to the current of admiration by which the proud, the humble, and the gifted were swayed alike. Nor did this sentiment remain the same; the processes by which its shallowness verged nearer to the soundless depths of love, thongh imperceptible, were so rapid that I had scarcely

marked the existence of any feeling deeper than admiration before I awoke to a consciousness that Mary Seymour had become the arbitress of my destiny. On what a passion so absorbing had been nourished it was difficult to specify -nay, a casual observer would have denied any ground for hope. But at times, when I approached her, my infatuated heart would fancy that it read beneath the assumed carelessness of her demeanor a thrill of pleasure. Even of this I could not feel assured; and so, involved in perplexing extremes of hope and doubt, 1 lingered on until the period positively fixed for my departure was but a day in advance. Existence had become to me a problem, and upon the positive or negative solution of these passing hours its whole result depended.

In the jostling, brilliant crowd which that evening assembled in the parlors of a wealthy citizen of BI sought an isolated station from whence I could gaze with undisturbed delight upon the face of Mary Seymour. As I wandered for this purpose to and fro, I aimed instinctively to shun the object of my passion. She was there, radiant as ever; and as I gazed upon her eyes, which now flashed in the capricious light of humor, and then lost their brilliance in a shade of utter night, I could not but acknowledge that the umpire of my happiness, whether merciful or not, could never be other than an angel from heaven.

I have said that I aimed to shun Miss Seymour, as if there were in her presence a terrible fascination which it would be wise to avoid. In despite of this, long before the close of that portentous night, I found myself beside her, listening as ever to the sparkling or haughty utterances of her lips. Once within the sphere of her attractions, I sank at once into a creature of the wind, swayed by her slightest whim, and listening or replying to her glittering sarcasms or glowing periods, with a mind meanwhile stumbling in a maze of irresolution. Should I pin my eternal peace upon the cast of a die, and learn in one momentous instant my whole after fate? Were it not better to prefer an uncertainty, which at least permitted hope, to a decree which might forbid all but despair? My soul experienced a kind of agonizing pleasure in thus leaning over the precipice of doubt, seeking to fathom the intense darkness of the gulf beneath it. Then a reaction of this extreme agony suggested-"Your life at best is

isery; can it be worse? And should your hopes be realized, what a heaven would earth become! Coward! who dare not stake a pain against a paradise !" I grew brave; I resolved;

with the formation of my resolution a better mood came over me. I could gaze once more upon the regal beauty by my side with a soul all alive to the exquisite pleasure of the sight. At length she said:

"Are you not weary, Mr. Fairfield, of this glitter, which so many worship as if all the jewels here were genuine, and all the rhetoric sincere? The open air is better."

She took my arm, and we passed into the gardens. The glittering moon was high in heaven, chasing a host of stars across the skies; the air was balmy as a tropic breeze, and the soft murmur of neighboring waters stole through the grounds like a whisper of invisible lips. Numbers of the guests were, like ourselves, enjoying a promenade through the spacious grounds, which stretched from the rear of the mansion, in a tasteful grove, down to the river bank, which formed the western boundary of my friend's estate. For some time we strolled vacantly along the winding paths, engaged in varying conversation, and often passing, in our irregular wanderings, others who, like ourselves, preferred the sublime beauty of the world about us to the artificial splendor of the parlor.

"And so you expect a quick release from these scenes of display," said Miss Seymour, in answer to myself. "Is it possible that you regret to exchange this life of questionable enjoyment for a path of undoubted usefulness?"

"Nature has fitted me to enjoy the social circle as well as most men," I replied; "and yet I am not Hindoo enough to worship pleasure as a deity."

"From our brief acquaintance, I should have marked Mr. Fairfield as one of her most devoted worshippers," she said, "for few attend her courts as steadily or devoutly."

"Nay, Miss Seymour," I remonstrated, "do not judge me prematurely. I am perhaps less fascinated by the mere life I have been leading than by some of those who lend the sanction of wealth and cultivation to its senseless ceremonies. Surely, one as vulnerable to social arts as I am may consistently yield to spells that have been countenanced by one as gifted and accomplished as yourself."

I thought I could detect a scornful smile upon her lip as she replied: "The drunkard has his Lethean cup, the brute his hour of repose, and these seasons of excitement answer to the same demand for rest."

"A specious theory," I rejoined, "but one that cannot be sustained. This endless round of chatter and parade excites to-day only to forsake to-morrow."

"You speak confidently; and yet few suffer themselves to doubt the power of trifles even like these to soothe unpleasant thoughts. Perhaps my own discrepancy of theory and practice may originate in a desire to fully satisfy myself whether these fleeting follies have really any potency for 'minds diseased.'"

"Let me hope that Miss Seymour cannot have encountered anything so fearful as to drive her to the waters of oblivion at the expense of reason. Indeed, I cannot conceive how such a necessity could come upon one so undeserving it," I said, with a profound failure in my attempt at gallantry.

"My hypothesis did not convey a right to speculate on what I have endured," she added, coldly. "I am not one, however, whose path has been so thornless as to give me no sympathy with sorrow, nor one so nearly an angel as to be free from error. You have gallantry enough, I suspect, to believe that what may not be readily explained may yet involve no guilt, for suffering is not limited to any corner of the globe."

"Far be it from me, dearest Miss Seymour," I said, "to revive the secret griefs which have afflicted one so perfect. Let me prove to you the depth of my esteem by avowing here the love which you must have recognized. Though I cannot claim the favor which long acquaintance merits, the briefest passions are not always the least worthy. I know my presumption in aspiring to worth so priceless; but if you knew how the thought of a future without you shakes me with dread, how the days would be sunless and the nights wretched with despair, you would look kindly on me. Oh, tell me that I may hope, and I shall be blest forever!"

As I bent above the averted head, and clasped the yielding figure to my heart, the weight of uncertainty lifted from above me, and my soul looked into heaven. Suddenly she rose from my embrace, and with her eyes flashing through

tears exclaimed::

"Henry Fairfield, you speak of time as lightly as a boy! And are you indeed one of that herd who think a week's devotion wins a woman's heart? I had thought you higher, nobler than they. But learn from me that if so brief a space of flattery wins some who wear a woman's form, it can never secure a true woman's love."

"You judge me harshly," I cried. "You do not know me if you think my love, though born in an hour, can die as soon. Name but the proof, if proof you desire, and I swear it shall be given."

66

"I will ask but a little thing, Henry Fairfield," she said, wildly, a very little thing to one who truly loves. Let us separate now, never more to meet until I call you to me. Ask me not when it will be; it may be months, nay, years; but it will come as surely as that moon shall wax and wane forever."

"And will naught else suffice?" I asked. "Nothing but an age of separation for months, years, perchance forever? Oh, picture to yourself a dying heart, that withers with the very dream it cherishes; picture a life on which love's sun has set forever. Bid me perform all possibilities, but do not doom me to an infinite despair."

"No," she said; "though it scatters my heart's best hopes to the four winds of heaven, I cannot yield the trial. Obey, and you go forth fenced in from harm by the strong love of a woman whose first true heart is yours; refuse, and this side of the grave there shall be for either of us no dawn of hope."

I shuddered to look upon her radiant figure, as, with head thrown back, a countenance as pale as marble, and eyes that seemed to mock the radiance of the skies on which they gazed, she pointed to the zenith. Instinctively I bent before her, as a slave might bend before his patron saint.

"And must I be thus banished ?" I moaned. "A day without thee seems an eternity; how can I seal myself in darkness, it may be forever? Oh, you are cold and cruel, and do not love me!"

"Henry!" she said, passionately, "you are unjust. A love like mine for you lives only in a woman's soul, and I will suffer no maiden bashfulness to blind you to your utter selfishness. Will you alone endure the agony? You speak as if I doomed you to a penance in which I bear no part. O God, that I might indeed escape the bitter tears that will flow as I recall this hour! Selfish trembler! your pillow will be roses compared with mine, whose hand thus severs the chain that may never again be linked. But, Henry"-and here her frenzied voice subsided into tenderness and solemn sadness"hear me swear that, should we part to meet no more on earth, before the judgment-seat of God, if no other woman with her woman's love shall call thee hers, I will rise up beside thee, and call thee mine! But to-morrow, Henry, to-morrow decide; until then deem the love confessed which must bear so cruel penance afterward. Let us go in." And she wound her arms around my neck, and leaned her head upon my shoulder.