WEARILY passed the two days of waiting, during which I endeavored to be cheerful; but the stern gravity of that unrelenting countenance grew darker and darker, until it began to be fearful. My letter was not answered; but I knew as well as written words could tell me, that my dream of happiness was over.

The appointed hour came for my lover to arrive; and this time I was waiting in the parlor, with no fear of swooning, but with a heavy and sorrow-burdened spirit. The old feeling of paralyzation came over Cold, restrained, and without animation, I gave pain to him who had come with the bright bow of promise in his sky, and knew nothing of my fears of clouds and darkness. He read in my averted eye an averted heart.

me.

Any one who entered might have supposed we were playing Puss, puss in the corner;' for we were scarcely within hearing distance of each other, and looked as if contemplating a funeral rather than any more joyous event. I could not speak of hope, for I had none, yet shrank from giving the true cause of my dejection and indifference.

We parted, not to meet again, but to write, though I had little hope of being permitted. Until there had been a prohibition, I need not be governed by it.

In three days it came, the letter a love-letter, the first my eyes had perused; and notwithstanding the heaviness of my spirit, thrilled it as only one joy in life can thrill. The first love-letter! it may seem

a foolish trifle to dwell upon, but who has not felt its power? May I have no readers who are ignorant of its magic charm.

Mine was full of love, but also contained many fears, and a little gentle chiding. But it was a rain-bow, so bright as to dispel the clouds, dark as night, which were gathering around me. I read it, re-read it, and committed it to memory. I answered it too, but my words did not come from my heart. I could not speak what I felt. I knew they must soon be recalled; yet it kept up the spark of hope in a lover's bosom, and sustained me, too, in my fast-failing strength.

But the crisis came at length. I was summoned to my father's presence to hear the decree, on which might hang the hope of happiness for life. I thought I was prepared for it, whatever it might be ; yet when it came, staggered beneath the blow. The words I could not remember an hour, and scarcely heard them, but the sensation they produced, as they fell cold and hard upon my heart, heavily and more heavily, one after another, till I had not strength to listen, no happiness in after-life could ever efface.

We were forbidden to meet, forbidden to write, because it was folly, and because Mr. D— was not a man he liked.' When asked for a better reason why those who were most concerned and were old enough to judge, should not be permitted to act for themselves, he could only answer, that he was not accustomed to give reasons: my duty was to obey, and not question.

If I had had a mother's bosom on which to weep, tears might have relieved the bursting heart and fevered brain; but I was alone; and all around grew dark, oh! how dark! and there seemed only desolation in a world which was indeed teeming with life and beauty.

I uttered no remonstrance, and spoke no word of bitterness; but when he had finished, walked quietly and silently from the room. I did not faint or fall: these were not my habits: I was accustomed to endure. To none around me were there any signs of agitation.

His

My first study was how to screen him who had wounded me. words had been so many daggers, plunged in my heart with a recklessness and guilt far greater than to have pierced my vitals with a fatal knife. Yet he was my father; and I had been taught that it would be like to the sin of Ham to uncover the nakedness of his soul to the world. I must speak falsehood, and take to myself the blame rather than do this.

When recovered a little from the shock, I remembered the reservation which at the time was meant to palliate the blow. At the end of two years, if we did not in the mean time meet or write or in any way communicate, he would remove the prohibition. Two years! it was a long time, an age, in such a life as mine; but it would have an end; and he did not know the strength of purpose he was fostering, by a promise which he did not suppose he should be called upon to fulfil. Two years! Though my daily routine was like walking hither and thither through the desert, with this star of hope I should not faint. But then arises the thought: Will he who is to share with me this sorrow and this hope, be equally patient? Will his love bear this test?' I wrote to tell him; but I did not permit him a glimpse of my

bruised spirit. I said our acquaintance had been short, and I had seen little of the world. My father therefore thought best to try us. Two years would soon pass away. Under the circumstances in which we were to await their end, we should be thoroughly proved, and I believed it to be well. If he could not accede to this, he was free from all obligations to me, and our acquaintance might be forgotten.

How my conscience smote me when I received the answer to this cold, unwomanly letter. Yes,' he said; he could wait-wait patiently as long as Jacob waited for Rachel, if he might then be sure he should have his reward. It seemed a mysterious trial, and quite unnecessary; but he had been greatly misjudged, if he was thought not equal to it. Of the nature of my love,' he continues, 'you have little idea, if you think it is to be quenched by time or distance, or unmanly suspicion of my honor and my truth. Little indeed do you imagine its breadth and depth and constancy, burning steadily and more brightly during all the years of your indifference, with not a ray of hope to feed its flame. Think you, then, it will die, when I am permitted to bear about with me the assurance, faint though it be in comparison with what I believed I should receive, that I am enshrined in your memory, and that I may at length possess the one only treasure I have ever coveted? I cannot say I shall to the letter obey the command of non-communication: I shall think it no sin to disobey it; but I will not offend him who made the prohibition by the indignity of my presence.'

To this I did not think it a sin to reply in a strain more in accordance with the feelings of a true and loving heart; and so ended, for a time, all knowledge of each other.

So little emotion had been manifested, that Aunt Ida had supposed all things going on smoothly, and soon after our final separation, exclaimed: Well, when are we to have the wedding; for I is to be the end of the matter?'

suppose this

'You will not have the trouble of a wedding, nor the trouble of more calls.'

any

'Oh! you need n't tell me, as if I should believe you had given that nice young man the mitten.'

It will make little difference whether you believe it, or not. If you wait, you will see.'

'Well, I think you'll be sorry, is all I have to say.'

And thus, for the present, ended the matter between us, and the heavy days wore on.

But the inward struggle was not less severe for this outward calm ; and the nervous energy wasted fast in its effort to aid the strong will to overcome and subdue. No panics or hysterics ever revealed my soul's agony; but suffering did not less surely perform its work. When prostration came, and for many months the victim hovered upon the verge of the grave, physicians had no name for the disease, and gossips had no suspicion of its cause. But the mind was relieved when the body was in tortures. Tossing and tumbling and groaning are proper manifestations in any affliction but that of the heart; but as the heartwound was not visible, and there was no danger of the accusation of

weakness, the spirit could share the relief of the body; and through tears the burning brain grew cool.

Sympathy, too; how much was bestowed for physical suffering! How ready was every hand to assuage: and he who had crushed the spirit, and poured poison where he should have poured balm, watched anxiously by the couch of pain; for to be sick and die was something he could understand; but to languish in idleness, or hunger for affection, was a degeneracy for which he had no compassion. To snatch a daughter from the grasp of death would not have drawn from him a relenting word. He had not the weakness of being moved by entreaties, or recalling a fiat, however unjust.

I recovered and when the spring-buds again opened, was able to go forth and enjoy their freshness. The mountains are ever the same in their hoary grandeur; the river and the meadow in their quiet beauty. The birds are always happy. No heaviness of spirit disturbs their matins, and the free, glad air alone restrains their soarings. Would that I had wings: I would flee to some spot where gladness dwells. How strangely sweet is tyranny to man: how all who have it in their power delight to control and sway and oppress; and insist upon believing they are exercising the right not of the stronger alone, but of the wiser and better. Kings and princes might be more easily pardoned for not sympathizing with the poor and toiling, for they were never poor; but far more astonishing it is how soon those who are old forget they were ever young.

One whole year had passed: now I should only have to count by moons, and they would swiftly speed away. But should I dare to trust that there would be no change in the heart I was still believing true? Whether I justly might or not, I did. I never for a moment doubted that it would return to me, not to fulfil a vow, or for fear of causing disappointment and sorrow, but with the same undivided affection, without a shadow of change. To be sure, I had not been left without some tokens of this fidelity. Post-masters are Argus-eyed, but they are not clairvoyant; and the nicely-folded papers with wrappers that left each end open,' as the law requires, brought me many assurances which were none the less valued because I was obliged to consult Flora's interpreters in order fully to understand their import. Lilies and geraniums were not letters, but they were right eloquent messengers on love's errands; and when I had formed a little herbarium of flowers which had been culled in field and forest and by the meadowbrook, selected among rare exotics in the conservatory or purloined from the garden-hedge, I had a book that needed no seal to keep it from other eyes; where thoughts which were traced in gold and purple and scarlet were meaningless to all who gazed, and yet to me spoke volumes. What a revelation was every leaf and petal to my soul. But there was no acknowledgment of them; and now, though the time for flowers had come again, the illuminated pages of my herbarium did not multiply: the next year would be blank. But it passed away, each season in its turn, and yet I lived. The bloom of summer and the blight of autumn were followed by winter's pageant and its storm; and like the snow-shroud to the flowers, was the dawn