and a moment after he turned to me with such a sad smile, and said, "I am constantly preaching submission and contentment, but I find it hard to practise." I understood him, dear Isabel, and I am afraid you must make up your mind to let him love you still. You know I never was romantic, but when I look at Herbert Grey, I feel that it is impossible that he should change, or even forget. You cannot reproach me now, for I have told you all that I know myself. I am afraid that it may give you pain, but I hardly fancy that you expected he would have forgotten you. He went to-day to spend a week or two with his father, and then goes back to D— where he says he has a great deal to do.

I was very glad to hear such a good account of Mrs. Denison's health. I can hardly fancy Annie speaking French; but she was always a quick little girl when she was in the school here. Her mother is longing to see her. My aunt sends her usual long list of messages, with an addition this time of gratitude for your remembrance of her. She spent half an

hour at the glass cupboard this morning, planning a new arrangement of her china; but she says it is quite useless, she knows, as you will be sure not to like her taste.

God bless you, my dearest child!

Your most affectionate aunt,

RACHEL C. SHEPHERD.

Mr. Price begs me to give his love to you, and is very angry, as I was obliged to own that I had not told you much news. He desires me to say that he has got a new curate at last. Mr. Bennett is a very good young man, I believe, but he is very different from Herbert. The young ladies are excited again, I think, judging by Mrs. Chapman's window; but Mr. Bennett is not handsome, I am happy to say. Mrs. Franklin has a son, and is doing very well.

CHAPTER XX.

In climes full of sunshine, though splendid their dyes,
Yet faint is the odour the flowers shed about;
'Tis the cloud and the mist of our own weeping skies
That call the rich spirit of fragrancy out.

So the wild glow of passion may kindle from mirth,
But 'tis only in grief true affection appears,
And e'en though to smiles it may first owe its birth,
The full soul of its sweetness is drawn out by tears.

MOORE.

We must follow Clarence Broke to India. During the dreary monotony of the long sea voyage he first fully realized all his loss, all the intensity of his passion for Isabel. He had known before how deeply he loved her-at her first words of doubt, he had felt it; but, in the excitement that preceded his departure from England, he had more felt that he was wretched than realized the actual loss he had

sustained-the void in his heart-the void in his future life. Now, in the calmer but drearier sorrow of these long, unemployed days, he went over in his mind the past, recalling it in all its brightness, and tried to look into the future, but from the latter his spirit shrunk. It was not now that he felt, for the first time, the weariness of his aimless life, but it came back upon him with redoubled force. He had in the last few months found love, sympathy, his very brightest ideal of purity and nobleness; and suddenly he was alone again, and he recoiled from his loneliness.

For his love for Isabel had been love indeed : not such as he had felt before-the passing fancy of a boyish heart-but a love founded less on her surpassing loveliness, and the charm and grace of her manner and conversation, than on the truth and beauty of her mind. It was this that made the bitterest sting of his grief. It was not only that the fair idol he had set up was shattered-it was not only that the prize, which he thought he had but to extend his hand to take, was wrenched from

his grasp, but he seemed to be cast back upon the waters of life, which never had satisfied the thirst of his soul, to be tossed on them again without an end, without an aim.

Even in his earliest youth, aspirations after a higher and better life than that he led had floated before him-and they had all been realized in Isabel. She made him feel all the beauty of virtue, and, of late, visions of a career of duty and usefulness-which have an especial charm when first presented to those who, with an active mind, have led an idle, objectless life—were continually present to him; and their brightness who can doubt, when it was her angel smile and angel voice which were to guide him along the way? And now, all was over.

These were the thoughts - this was the concluding reflection-which, day by day, occupied and saddened his mind, as he stood, in the heat of noon and in the silence of night, alone upon the deck, his eyes resting, with a kind of dull satisfaction, on the unbroken expanse of water around him.