ed my manner with more than maidenly re-thing from a person who loves you, and whom serve, resist always his noble and generous na- you love, unless indeed it impoverishes them to ture, his high ideas, his truth stainless as a give. I could not accept even a flower, gladly, knight's honor, and his gentleness that was but from a person who had injured or hurt me, or the ripple of his strength. whom I did not respect, though I might love them most deeply; but from him I would have taken the world with no other expression of thanks than a smile or a kiss. "So, in spite of myself, we learned to know each other well, and before the year returned in its circle, before even the sultry August noons came back, Xavier Henry had asked me of my mother, and, with a thrill of fear and resistance even in the vailed rapture of the hour, I had learned that I loved him. Marion there is much that is sweet and tender in the blind love of a young girl, in the dreamy idealization of early love, and the new emotions that banish childhood before the child knows what it is to be a woman; but I believe there is no love so utterly absorbing, so intense, so devout, as the passionate homage of a mature heart, the strong and pure devotion that has the assent of ripened judgment, and the wisdom of experience and discipline. I know it is not in the heart of any woman to love more entirely, more intensely than I loved. "What happy hours we spent in that house! long evenings on the vine-sheltered piazza, or in the little library, lit with the flickers of a woodfire, talking of every thing in heaven above or the earth beneath, with interspaces of exquisite silence, when it was enough to be conscious of ourselves. I have a strange memory; every word that is said to me by those I love, whether they give me keen pleasure or sting me with pain and distrust, I remember always, I can not forget; and so I recalled afterward how rarely Xavier and I spoke of my brother, and especially how one evening we were sitting on the piazza, listening to the ripple of Gottschalk's aeriel fingers upon his quick-dropping accentuated sparks of keys, as they sounded from the window of a musical neighbor whose house he frequented. The music had died away in a low rustle of rapid notes, like a shower passing away "I was twenty-five, and had known no early passion or fancy; I had lived a lonely and toilsome life, set aside from all companions of my own age, without friendship, without amuse-over an oak forest, and we sat quiet, as if the ment; nothing but the unremitting need of labor had kept my heart from preying upon itself, but nothing had given its homesick weariness an hour's repose. It is true I was religious, formally, not with any living power, but the humanity of nature too often outruns its spirituality, and now I was, at once, and for all time, at home, safe, appreciated, loved! Over-blessed Alix! crowned with the woman's crown-life of joy, and I was troubled that I had spoken, loved! "You probably think me exaggerative, but to myself my words seem weak. I was so utterly absorbed in this new emotion that I believe life itself might have ebbed from me unnoted, till the final pang of parting with him should come. I had endured living before as a heavy but necessary burden; now every breath I drew was palpable joy. But I spare you further recital of a passion so egotistic even in its review. How the summer months went by rapidly. Almost directly after our engagement Xavier had bought a pleasant house, in a quiet, up-town street, furnished it with every comfort even to luxury, and given it to my mother; thither we all removed, and establishing Dr. Bellanger as our permanent guest, Mr. Henry himself assumed the care of the family, asserting, by way of excuse for an arrangement that his delicacy suggested, that he could only dine so far away from his business, he must lodge and breakfast at his usual place. "I see the Rutledge pride sparkle in your eye, Marion; you, of all women, would never owe such obligation, even to the man you loved. But I am not so; I knew Xavier liked to take care of me as well as I liked to have him; was I not his own? I can not, and never could, understand any reluctance in accepting any fitful spirit, undisturbed, might return again. I sighed softly, and Xavier felt the long breath I drew against his arm, for he asked, 'Why?' So I told him I was thinking how glad Francis would have been for me. He did not answer directly; a sort of magnetism made me know that he restrained a shudder. I thought it was the sudden dream of death crossing our perfect but he said before I could "We do not know, Alix. All things are sequences. I might not have known you.' "And again the mystical sphere of the aura warned me that he shook inwardly, and I lifted his hand to my face. It was deadly cold; but the caress soothed him, and he left me that night with a smile deep and sweet as ever. In the autumn it was resolved that we should be married in June, and Mr. Henry bought a house in Eighth Avenue-the house you know so well, Marion-and set himself to the task of arranging it for our home. I would have liked well to stay where I was, but he did not please, and it was good that he should have some occupation, for he had invested all his money, and having no business, his active nature pined, and I noticed painfully that he began to have attacks of depression and silence, when he sat for hours with listless hands at my side, unmoving and idle, only sometimes fixing his eyes on me with a look of such melancholy passion as struck me to the soul, and cost me many efforts to return with a serene or gay expression. But this remodeling and furnishing our house amused him, and the perpetual contest between his 'furious taste' and lavish ideas and my quieter, more economic fancies, afforded just that piquant zest to our daily excursions among upholsterers, dry-goods shops, fresco painters, and all house-craftsmen that made him enjoy them more healthily, if not more profoundly, than the days passed wholly with me in the diviner airs of intense emotion and hope. I see now, as then I could not see, what self-absorbed and solitary creatures we might have become, living as if Paradise were again found, and we two the sole and irresponsible inhabitants of earth. But, O God! it pleased Thee to set a flaming sword at either gate, and we might not even be together in the desert, lest so our Eden should never have its end! "By May the house was finished and ready for its occupants. Our tastes had curbed each other, and the result was, to our own fancy, perfect. The day it was all done, even to the lighting of a fire in every grate and furnace, to test their accurate arrangement, Xavier came to me with a strange expression of gravity and curious expectance, and said he had brought me a gift. Hitherto he had only given me flowers in all our acquaintance. Flowers were, and are, my loves, and he knew it. Even the troth-ring he brought me was a quaintly enameled pansy, with a diamond drop of dew in its heart. But now he had brought me a big brass key and a roll of paper. I put my face in my hands and laughed. 666 "Open them, Alix!' said he, in a grave but somewhat jarred voice, and unfolding the papers I saw that they were a deed of gift of the new house, its furniture and appurtenances, and a set of certificates of a hundred thousand dollars in stocks, all made out to Alix Thuriot. I have told you, Marion, what I think of giving and receiving, still this amused me, for it seemed useless. "I don't want it, Xavier!' said I, looking up at him; he laughed at me for a moment, I hardly know why, now, but it seemed to amuse him, and then he said, "No, I suppose not, but it is best, Alix; if any thing should happen to me, you will at least be safe from one suffering.' "My voice I know quivered, as I answered, 'I should care -' He stilled the speech there, and I did not refuse to be quieted with caresses, for my heart was at flood-tide, and would have spent its pain in an agony of tears had but one drop led the way. "Now the day of our marriage drew on like a dream. Xavier did not even propose that the ceremony should take place in our new house, afterward I knew why; but it was arranged that we should go from my mother's house to church, and thence to our own home, and there receive our very few friends at noon. "Shall I ever forget that day, that rose like perfect sapphire from the sea, and swung from garden and conservatory every odor of summer through the dawn? I went to my own room after breakfast to dress, and found that in my brief absence it had been visited by a hand that asserted itself in its own way; masses of pearlwhite roses adorned my toilet-table and mirror, diffusing their faint, refined perfume like a mist over the room; and on the vail I was to wear lay a garland of orange-buds and flowers, despoiled of every glossy leaf, but delicate and graceful as are the flowers of frost upon a window, and breathing the glow and delirium of the tropic summer from every milk-white petal and golden anther within. I dreamed too long over these heaped blossoms, full of thought, trembling with a strange mingling of emotions, nor was I ready just at the hour, for I took due pains with my dress, and was rewarded by the lingering rapturous look with which Xavier received me, as I came to him when the carriages were ready for us. "What followed I do not care to descant upon, there is something too awful and solemn in such an hour when the blessing of Heaven stoops to consecrate and exalt the tumultuous passion of earth, for words that are only earthly to portray. I know not why no bride has ever died at the altar, appalled by the transcendent import of the hour; but it may be that, as with me, even consciousness reels, and the soul is dazzled into merciful blindness. "I knew that Xavier was there, I knew that I was taken in silence utter and expressive to my new home, that his arms lifted me over its threshold, that my first welcome there was his clasp and kiss, and the whispered words, 'My wife.' Then I knew that those useful safetyvalves, the ceremonies that in this world accompany every crisis, and vindicate the trivial element which alleviates and preserves life in the hour of intensest emotion were at hand; that I must submit to the usages of society when I felt most absent from and careless of them; so I was re-arranged and put in position at the head of my parlor to receive our guests; Xavier surveying me with a look of pride that sheathed a deeper pang of pain, only that I knew it not. "They came one after another, very few, and a strange mixture, but I was too happy not to be glad and genial in receiving them, and while I was talking gayly with an old French gentleman, a friend of Dr. Bellanger, the waiter came to me and said that Mr. Henry requested me to step into the library a moment. I excused myself, and went; there was Xavier divested of his ceremonial dress, attired for the street, with his hat in his hand, and a tense expression in his face, as if he were self-controlled by some great will for the instant. "Alix,' said he, 'I have heard that there is a person I know, staying at the Astor House, who is to sail for California this afternoon at five in the steamer; I must see him on business before he goes; will you forgive me if I leave you for an hour to entertain our friends alone, my wife?' "I could have done any thing for the tone of that last phrase, and I gave him a gay assent. "How lovely you are!' said he, drawing nearer; and clasping me with a strict embrace, and a long, long, almost fierce caress, he said good-by. I do not know why I lingered, but as 6 he left the door he turned, returned, for I was "He is not there, Alix!' said my faithful still there, and he reiterated the caress. With friend, he has not been at the Astor House, a strange instinct my girlish shyness left me, I nor has any person gone from there to the Calwas his wife, some inexpressible presentiment | ifornia steamer, and, Alix, there is no trace of impelled me, I threw myself upon his neck, and clung to him as if life depended on my hold there, and for the first time I kissed his lips with my own, untrembling and fearless; then he left me. "I went again to the parlor, made Mr. Henry's apologies, entertained my guests as best I might, first with conversation, then with refreshments, and in due time they left, but my husband had not come. Mother would have had me take off my bridal dress, and be quietly attired for dinner, but I would not; he had called me lovely in it, and should I so soon lay aside the impression? I drew a deep low arm-chair to the long window of the parlor, turned the blind a little, and sat there to watch for him; the cool sea-wind blew, and brought to me the expressive scent of white locust-blooms from a tree in the little turfed inclosure on either side of the door; I hate the scent of locusts to this day. Two hours, three, had passed, and he had said an hour,' but yet he did not come; every passer-by I thought was Xavier, and yet none of them were. Six struck from a near steeple, and one upon another distant clocks repeated the stroke. Mother called me to dinner, but I could not go; still the sea-wind blew, and the locust-flowers perfumed it. 'Seven!' and again seven, in blank repetition on those bells. I looked up and saw Dr. Bellanger. 666 Will you go to the Astor House, and to his room, and ask?' said I. "Yes, Alix, if you will promise me one thing; promise to sit here till I return, to stay quiet?' "I will,' said I; indeed nothing could have tempted me to move, to be away if Xavier should come. So he went, and the day passed into twilight, presently it became dark, dew fell, and a heavier sweetness flowed from the flowers without, and the garland that confined my vail withered with sickly odors, dropping here and there a faded petal, in awful portent, that my soul owned with a shudder. There was a gaslight directly opposite our door, so that I could see distinctly as in the day whoever passed under it, and I sat stone-like, watching, knowing that my mother went to and fro with perfumes and cordials, imploring me to take something lest I should faint, but I put them all away; I knew I should not faint; if I did, how could I see Xavier come? then more clocks struck, eight! nine! ten! they seemed to be in my brain, to send their brazen thrill through every vibrating nerve, and make sense and soul reel with an ominous clang, as if they were funeral bells, knelling the death of all time; the appalling, whirling dismay of eternity, and its inextricable cycles. him at his room; three days ago the lodginghouse keeper tells me his trunks were removed. Were they brought here?' "Mother said they were not; nothing of Xavier's dress except his elaborate toilet for the day was there. "Now,' said I, 'Dr. Bellanger, go to the police; give them any thing.' "So he went, and I resumed my watch. My mother slept on the sofa; and the night crept on like a long year, the city sounds died into sleep, even the roar of wheels ceased. One solemn half hour's hush fell like a prayer over all, even the footsteps passed no more-and then all began again. The ragged wretch who gathers food from the street, such as dogs and vermin spare; the earliest laborer plodding for bread even before dawn-these passed one by one, and then came the rising turmoil of life in full roar. Silence was over, and Dr. Bellanger came again. How pale he was! for there was no trace of Xavier. Did I dream? Should I, with one desperate struggle against this horrid semblance, awake, and find myself again in our little lodgings, or in my mother's house, or perhaps even in Xavier's arms? Alas, it was too real! Bellanger told me to take some wine he brought, and I obeyed like a child; then he said I must go up stairs, be warmly dressed, and lie down, for I was death-cold; but that I could not do without one more look. I threw open the shutters, and stepping out on the iron balcony, took a long survey of the street-the locust-scents smote me like a fever, and sickened my sense with their bitter sweetness till I felt as if a nightmare choked me with kisses-and Xavier was nowhere there! Dr. "Afterward, long afterward, I heard there was a house in the avenue haunted by a murdered bride, who appeared in the gray dawn in her wedding garments, herself as white as they, wringing her hands at the window! "Then I went up stairs. I had not been into my room before that day, but he had; for about the oval mirror of my dressing-table a white passion-flower, springing from a porcelain vase, wreathed its mystic, spiritual blooms, calm and sacred as the flowers of Heaven are; and upon the table itself lay a massive gold rosary and crucifix, that since I have ever worn, but on the back of the cross were graven only two names-'Alix Thuriot.' 66 Marion, I had never prayed before that hour except with my lips; but now, disarrayed of the bridal mockeries I wore, and folded up in warmth and silence, I prayed myself asleep. Oh, could I only never have awaked! I need not tell you what such a waking is, and yet a "Eleven!' I heard such steps as once be- loss like mine is perhaps in one thing harder fore I heard, Dr. Bellanger came. I saw him than widowhood, for I could never quiet my pause under the lamp, irresolute, but he came sorrow with resignation, it was so fed on faint in and looked at me. I could not ask, I gasped. | and pitiless hopes from day to day; and there was in it another and exquisitely painful ele- | him through that sun-stroke which had so crazed ment-the ever-present, never-answered wonder why Xavier had left me so; for a thousand little things, one after another, came to light, proving that he had intended and planned this flight long, long before. 66 him, and without doubt Francis had talked to him of us, of his own motives in gold-seeking, of our poverty and dependence on him; and in an agony of regret and remorse he had resolved to make at least this small atonement, to supply to us pecuniarily the loss he had caused. I did not think he meant to love me as he did; but I thought, too, he accepted that as another pang of penance for the past. Nor did I believe even then that he had ever meant to injure Francis; I knew him too well. How the affair had been brought on and so terminated, I could not know; but I am sure, perfectly sure, there was some evil or wrong that left Xavier blameless. Neither did it seem to me, as it might to many, that I should refuse to accept his aid, his atonement that he had so fully, so zealously wrought out. Could I let all this pain, and labor, and self-denial be poured upon the ground, and wring afresh the heart which, for all I knew, might be watching me afar off with passionate regret and unspeakable longing? Besides, I loved him! Two years, lingering as years must be whose moments are noted one by one with anxious expectance, passed in this way, with no intelligence of my husband. Dr. Bellanger and my mother staid with me, and I was not alone; but ah! how lonely! I hid my bridal dress, the crushed vail, and withered garland in a chest, even as that happier bride hid herself, and was found-a skeleton ! Ghastly and mournful as that symbol did they seem to me in the annual hour I permitted myself to look back upon their first and fresh estate, and mine! "About the middle of the third year, Dr. Bellanger came to me one morning with a strange look of trouble in his kindly face. 'Alix,' said he, 'I have something to tell thee, my child.' In any emotion he remembered his French 'tutoyer,' and I knew from that he had been agitated; there was but one key to "Another year went by. I had thought it my thoughts. best to keep this discovery a secret from my "You have heard of Xavier!' I exclaimed, mother; and I had learned, at length, to find trembling in every limb. "Nothing from him, but of him I have heard,' answered he. "Is he alive?' I said in a sort of hiss; it was so hard to speak it. "I do not know that; but what I have to tell thee is of time before, not since he left us,' said the doctor, and it is hard for thee.' peace in the duties and offices of religion-in the charities to which a widowed and solitary woman could well devote her life and superfluous fortune-and a deeper peace in the prayers I offered daily and hourly for the husband I had lost, and the souls of my dead. It was now nearly four years after our marriage, when, one morning at breakfast, Dr. Bellanger received a note from the physician of the hospital, asking him to come down as soon as he could, and see a man, brought in the night before, who could scarcely live out another night, and insisted on seeing Dr. Bellanger. As soon as our meal was over he went, and in half an hour returned with a carriage, seeming much agitated, and told me I must dress and go with him, for the man, whose name was Essinger, had something to tell us both of Francis. I was ready almost instantly, and we drove to the hospital in silence; but such a sight as that man was I never saw before-I trust never to see again. Livid, death-smitten, bloody from the gnawed under-lip, bitten in mortal pangs; his hair all wild and tangled, his eyes full of fire and evil, I was almost afraid to come near him; and not even the face of a woman could restrain the oaths which he mingled with his story. But it was a story such as no oaths could obscure for me-the triumph of truth and reality over appalling circumstances and the judgment of men -even the self-conviction of one man, and that man Harry Thorne! "So with a kindly meant caution and delay which I will not repeat, he proceeded to tell me that he had that morning met in the street the keeper of the lodging-house where Xavier roomed, who, remembering Dr. Bellanger's inquiries, and interested in the story, was coming to bring him a gold pencil that had been found in the room which was Xavier's in the course of some recent repairs. He said Mr. Henry had missed the pencil, and requested him to inquire for it of the servants; but it had never been found, till now it came to light where it had slipped down in a crack of the wood-work together with several other things lost there from time to time by different occupants apparently, but all useless waifs, except that above this pencil lay the cover of a letter. Dr. Bellanger handed me the pencil and the envelope when he had finished his story; the one was marked H. X. Thorne, the other directed first to the same name, except that the first initial was expanded into Harry, and then redirected to X. Henry. I stared at both a moment before I remembered; then the miner's letter came back to me fresh and distinct. 'Harry Thorne.' I had "I will not detail to you Essinger's story in married-oh! worse, worse! I had loved-my his words, for my own has attained a weary brother's murderer!-deepest horror of all, I length. It was, in effect, a confession. loved him still! Now all became clear; the seems that upon the voyage out Francis had mystical investment of my life dropped away, given him mortal offense, and he had sworn reand I knew at once why Xavier had done what venge, but seeming to be friendly, had followed he did. He knew Francis well; he had nursed | him to the diggings, and there won from him It at the gambling table almost all the proceeds of his labor, and then, finding he could not himself take his life without danger of retaliative Lynch law, he had taken advantage of my poor brother's paroxysms of derangement to enrage him against Harry Thorne, his best friend and faithful nurse, and made him challenge Harry, at the same time taking a fearful oath that he would shoot him in cold blood if he refused to fight-or so Essinger represented it when he carried the message. "There was but one escape for Mr. Thorne -it was in charging Essinger, who offered himself as second, to load his pistol only with a light charge of powder, that he might go through the ceremony of combat with no evil results to Francis, whatever might be his own fate. ous and ghostly in the long halls and corridors of the hospital. But, "I left Dr. Bellanger to make the necessary arrangements for his burial, and went home alone, but in strange peace-for now doubt and fear were gone, the inexpressible terror of uncertainty forever fled. I had a right to love my husband as fully, as proudly, as openly as I would. Mother, who had pined and lamented much over my anomalous position, was most pleased that it should be properly asserted. I, too, was not sorry that I could wear my husband's name. I had it blazoned upon the door, that he might, if at any time he should pass it, led by a longing that I measured by my own, discover a welcome and a reinstation waiting for him upon the very threshold. I had it added to the two names upon my crucifix, that I "This Essinger promised; but seizing the might pray with my lips upon the word. opportunity that might never recur, he broke Marion, from that hour to this-for seven long his oath, loaded the pistol with ball, and when gray years since he loved and left me--I have Thorne, discharging it, shot my brother through had no token of Xavier. Whether in some the heart, in an agony of despair and horror he mad excitement of battle he has striven to forhurled the pistol at Essinger, left the gulch get-to die-or in some far-off country labors that hour, and far away beyond the mountains unremittingly for the same end, finding, as I achieved an immense fortune, and never set well know, both efforts vain; or whether he is himself within the reach of Essinger's eyes no more of earth, but watches me forever from again. his celestial heights with the patient passion of "What tortures of remorse he underwent in a spirit, I know not-perhaps shall never know those two years no man may know; surely God—in time. But still I am waiting for him— must have accepted them for expiation of his still I am his wife; and I have it for my earthunintentional sin. Essinger's story was taken ly strength and consolation, that even in the down by a lawyer whom I sent for, sworn to, agony of prayer I can read upon the crucifix and signed as a deposition; for I would have before me the name which here I write for you no form omitted that might possibly be a mat--my married name—my husband's! ter of use or comfort to Xavier, should he ever return. For my mother's certainty, I made Essinger describe him, which he did with the utmost accuracy, adding that if he lived he must have a scar across the left cheek, where my brother's ball had scared him, just escaping a mortal effect. I knew that scar well, and remembered better how Xavier had always eluded any explanation of its cause, often as I had asked him. "It was evident enough to every by-stander that day in the hospital that the wretched patient was dying, and I could not leave him unwarned and unconsoled to leap from his wretchedness and sin into the awe and horror of another world. I felt that it was but a fit exposition of my entire forgiveness that I should offer him the consolations of my religion. Alas! I could not but feel that my forgiveness was not purely Christian-that it was impelled in part by the tender, if unspoken, consciousness that but for him I should never have seen Xavier, and in that hour I could most profoundly feel "'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.' "For hours I prayed beside his bed, or read to him from books of devotion, till before he died he seemed, at least, quieted and soothed; and it was upon the crucifix-my husband's parting gift that he breathed out his life with one long shudder, just as the twilight gathered mysteri "ALIX THURIOT THORNE." MY FORENOON WITH THE BABY. SOME fiend breathed ill-timed and ill-fated benevolence into my heart. Satan is like scrofula, he always seizes a man by the weakest part of his constitution. "I'll tell you, Aunt Fanny," I said, under the impulse, with the joyous smile of one who brings relief at a crisis, "go you to church with uncle and the boys. You must not lose this fine day. I'll take care of the baby." Aunt Fanny looked at me with some little doubt. "Oh, yes," I said, with calm and confident dignity, "of course I can. Just as if a man of my size couldn't take care of a baby for three hours! Besides, I know exactly what to do. I've seen you do it more than a hundred times. And children always like me." If my Aunt Fanny had had but this one only darling, she would have seen me in-Hackensack before she would have done it. But Sammy was her ninth (all the rest being, by various accidents, absent, or to be absent, that morning); and I have noticed that where there are so many, people don't think quite so much of them per head. What I mean is by no means that maternal love is like a dish of beans, to be divided about in smaller messes as there are more to partake of it, but only this-that the |