A man like Harry, for instance. Harry isn't a hero; he's a good, true, noble-hearted boy, though, and I'd rather have him than the angel Gabriel, if I could choose now. I don't see what's to object to in Jim, if you like him and love him, as you say. He's handsome; he's lively and cheerful; he's kind-hearted and obliging; and he's certainly true and constant in his affections: and now he has a good position, and one where he can do a good work in the world, and your influence might help him in it."

"Why, Eva, you seem to be pleading for him like a lawyer," said Alice, apparently not at all displeased to hear that side of the question discussed.

"Well, really," said Eva, "I do think it would be a nice thing for us all if you could like Jim, for he's one of us; we all know him and like him, and he wouldn't take you away to the ends of the earth; you might settle right down here, and live near us, and all go on together cosily. Jim is just the fellow to make a bright, pleasant, hospitable home; and he's certain to be a devoted husband to whomever he marries."

"Jim ought to be married, certainly," said Alice, in a reflective tone. "Just the right kind of a marriage would be the making of him."

"Well, look over the girls you know, and see if there's any one that you would like to have Jim marry."

"I know," said Alice, with a quickened flush of color, "that there isn't a girl he cares a snap of his finger for."

"There's Jane Stuyvesant."

"Oh, nonsense! don't mention Jane Stuyvesant!"

"Well, she's rich, and brilliant, and very gracious to Jim."

"Well, I happen to know just how much that amounts to. Jim never would have a serious thought of Jane Stuyvesant—that I'm certain of. She's a perfectly frivolous girl, and he knows it."

"I've thought sometimes he was quite attentive to one of those Stephenson girls, at Aunt Maria's."

"What, Sophia Stephenson! You couldn't have got more out of the way. Why, no! Why, she's nothing but a breathing wax doll; that's all there is to her. Jim never could care for her."

"Well, what was it about that Miss Du Hare?"

"Oh, nothing at all, except that she was a dashing, flirting young thing that took a fancy to Jim and invited him to her opera box, and of course Jim went. The fact is, Jim is good-looking and lively and gay, and will go a certain way with any nice girl. He likes to have a jolly, good time; but he has his own thoughts about them all, as I happen to know. There isn't one of these that he has a serious thought of."

"Well, then, darling, since nobody else will suit him, and it's for his soul's health and wealth to be married, I don't see but you ought to undertake him yourself."

Alice smiled thoughtfully, and twisted her sash into various bows, in an abstracted manner.

"You see," continued Eva, "that it would be altogether improper for you to enact the fable of the dog in the manger—neither take him yourself nor let any one else have him."

"Oh, as to that," said Alice, flushing up, "he has my free consent to take anybody else he wants to; only I know there isn't anybody he does want."

"Except—" said Eva.

"Well, except present company," said Alice. "I'll tell you, Eva, if anything could incline me more to such a decision, it's the way Aunt Maria has talked about Jim to me—setting him down as if he was the last and most improbable parti I could choose; and as if, of course, I never could even think of him. I don't see what right she has to think so, when there are girls a great deal richer and standing higher in fashionable society than I do that would have Jim in a minute, if they could get him. Jim is constantly beset with more invitations to parties and to go into society than he can at all meet, and I know there are plenty that would be glad enough to take him."

"Oh, but Aunt Maria has moderated a good deal as to Jim, lately," said Eva. "She told me herself, the other day, that he really was one of the most gentlemanly, agreeable young fellows she knew of, and said what a pity it was he hadn't a fortune."

"Oh, that witch of a creature!" said Alice, laughing. "He has been just amusing himself with getting round Aunt Maria."

"And I dare say," said Eva, "that, if she finds Jim has a really good position, she might at last come to a state of resignation. I will say that for Aunt Maria, that after fighting you for a while she comes round handsomely—when she is certain that fighting is in vain; but the most amusing thing is to see how she has come down about Mr. St. John's ritualism. Think of her actually going up there to church last Sunday, and not saying a word about the candles, or the chantings, or any of the abominations! She only remarked that she was sure she never heard a better Gospel sermon than Mr. St. John preached—which was true enough. Harry and I were so amused we could hardly keep our faces straight; but we said not a word to remind her of past denunciations."

"The danger of going to Rome is sensibly abated, it appears," said Alice.

"Oh, yes. I believe Aunt Maria must be cherishing distant visions of a time when she shall be aunt to Mr. St. John, and set him all straight."

"She'll have her match for once," said Alice, "if she has any such intentions."

"One thing is a comfort," said Eva. "Aunt Maria has her hands so full, getting up Angie's trousseau, and buying her sheets and towels and table-cloths, and tearing all about, up stairs and down, and through dark alleys, to get everything of the very best at the smallest expense, that her nervous energies are all used up, and there is less left to be expended on you and me. A wedding in the family is a godsend to us all."

The conversation here branched off into an animated discussion of some points in Angie's wedding-dress, and went on with an increasing interest till it was interrupted by a dolorous voice from the top of the entry staircase.

"Girls, have you the least idea what time it is?"

"Why, there's Harry, to be sure," said Eva. "Dear me, Alice, what time is it?"

"Half-past one! Mercy on us! isn't it a shame?"

"Coming, Harry, coming this minute," called Eva, as the two sisters began turning down the gas and raking up the fire; then, gathering together collars, hair-pins, ribbons, sashes and scarfs, they flew up the stairway, and parted with a suppressed titter of guilty consciousness.

"It was abominable of us," said Eva; "but I never looked at the clock."

CHAPTER XLIV.

FLUCTUATIONS.

Midnight conversations of the sort we have chronicled between Alice and Eva, do not generally lead to the most quiet kind of sleep. Such conversations suggest a great deal, and settle nothing; and Alice, after retiring, lay a long time with her great eyes wide open, looking into the darkness of futurity, and wondering, as girls of twenty-two or thereabouts do wonder, what she should do next.

There is no help for it; the fact may as well be confessed at once, that no care and assiduity in fencing and fortifying the conditions of a friendship between an attractive young woman and a lively, energetic young man, will ensure their always remaining simply and purely those of companionship and good fellowship, and never becoming anything more.

In the case of St. John and Angie, the stalk of friendship had had but short growth before developing the flower of love; and now, in Alice's mind and conscience, it was becoming quite a serious and troublesome question whether a similar result were not impending over her.

The wise man of old said: "He that delicately bringeth up his servant from a child shall have him for his son at last." The proverb is significant, as showing the gradual growth of kindly relations into something more and more kindly, and more absorbing.

So, in the night-watches, Alice mentally reviewed all those looks, words and actions of Jim's which produced a conviction in her mind that he was passing beyond the allotted boundaries, and approaching towards a point in which there would inevitably be a crisis, calling for a decision on her part which should make him either more or less than he had been. Her talk with Eva had only set this possibility more distinctly before her.

Was she, then, willing to give him up entirely, and to shut the door resolutely on all intimacy tending to keep up and encourage feelings that could come to no result? When she proposed this to herself, she was surprised at her own unwillingness to let him go. She could scarcely fancy herself able to do without his ready friendship, his bright, agreeable society—without the sense of ownership and power which she felt in him. Reviewing the matter strictly in the night-watches, she was obliged to admit to herself that she could not afford to part with Jim; that there was no woman she could fancy—certainly none in the circle of her acquaintance—whom she could be sincerely glad to have him married to; and when she fancied him absorbed in any one else, there was a dreary sense of loss which surprised her. Was it possible, she asked herself, that he had become necessary to her happiness—he whom she never thought of otherwise than as a pleasant friend, a brother, for whose success and good fortune she had interested herself?

Well then, was she ready for an engagement? Was the great ultimate revelation of woman's life—that dark Eleusinian mystery of fate about which vague conjecture loves to gather, and which the imagination invests with all sorts of dim possibilities—suddenly to draw its curtains and disclose to her neither demi-god nor hero, but only the well-known, every-day features of one with whom she had been walking side by side for months past—"only Jim and nothing more?"

Alice could not but acknowledge to herself that she knew no man possible or probable that she liked better; and yet this shadowy, ideal rival—this cross between saint and hero, this Knight of the Holy Grail—was as embarrassing to her conclusions as the ghost in "Hamlet." It was only to be considered that the ideal hero had not put in an actual appearance. He was nowhere to be found or heard from; and here was this warm-hearted, helpful, companionable Jim, with faults as plenty as blackberries, but with dozens of agreeable qualities to every fault; and the time seemed to be rapidly coming when she must make up her mind either to take him or leave him, and she was not ready to do either! No wonder she lay awake, and studied the squares of the dim window and listened to the hours that struck, one after another, bringing her no nearer to fixed conclusions than before! A young lady who sees the time coming when she must make a decision, and who doesn't want to take either alternative presented, is certainly to be pitied. Alice felt herself an abused and afflicted young woman. She murmured at destiny. Why would men fall in love? she queried. Why wouldn't they remain always devoted, admiring friends, and get no further? She was having such good times! and why must they end in a dilemma of this sort? How nice to have a gentleman friend, all devotion, all observance, all homage, without its involving any special consequences!

When she came to shape this feeling into words and look at it, she admitted that it savored of the worst kind of selfishness, and might lead to trifling with what is most precious and sacred. Alice was a conscientious, honorable girl, and felt all the force of this. She had justified herself all along by saying that her intimacy with Jim had so far been for his good; that he had often expressed to her his sense that she was leading him to a higher and better life, to more worthy and honorable aims and purposes: but how if he should claim that this very ministry had made her necessary to him, and that, if she threw him off, it would be worse than if she had never known him? Looking over the history of the last few months, she could not deny to herself that, as their acquaintance had grown more and more confidential, her manners possibly had expressed a degree of kindness which might justly have inspired hopes. Was she not bound to fulfill such hopes if she could?

These were most uncomfortable inquiries, and she was glad of morning and a cheerful breakfast-table to dispel them. Things never look so desperate by daylight, and Alice managed a good breakfast with a tolerable appetite. Then there was the tarlatan dress to be made over and rearranged, and Eva's toilette to be put into party order—quite enough to keep two young women of active fancy and skillful fingers busy for one day. It was a snowy, unpleasant day, and, as they lived on an out-of-the-way street, they were secure from callers and took their work into the parlor so soon as Harry had gone for the day. The little room soon became a brilliant maelstrom of gauzy stuffs and bright ribbons, among which the two sat chatting, arranging, combining, compounding; as of old, one might imagine a pair of heathen goddesses in the clouds, getting up rainbows. No matter how solemn and serious we of womankind are in our deepest hearts, or how philosophically we may look down on the vanity of dress, we must all confess that a party is a party; and the sensible, economical woman who does not often go, and does not make a point of having all the paraphernalia in constant readiness, has to give all the more care and thought to the exceptional occasion when she does. Even Scripture recognizes the impossibility of appearing at a feast without the appropriate garment; and so Eva and Alice cut and fitted and trimmed and tried experiments in head-dresses and arrangements of hair, and meanwhile Alice had the comfort of talking over and over to Eva all the varying shades of the subject that was on her mind.

What woman does not appreciate the blessing of a patient, sympathetic listener, who will hear with unabated interest the same story repeated over and over as it rises in one's thoughts? Eva listened complacently and with the warmest interest to the same things that Alice had said the night before, and went on repeating to her the same lessons of matronly wisdom with which she had then enriched her, neither of them betraying the slightest consciousness that the things they were saying were not just fresh from the mint—entirely new and hitherto unconsidered.

Jim's character was discussed, and with that fine, skillful faculty of analysis and synthesis which forms the distinctive interest of feminine conversation. In the course of these various efforts of character portrait-painting, it became quite evident to Eva that Alice was in just that state in which some people's admitted faults are more interesting and agreeable than the virtues of some others. When a woman gets thus far, her final decision is not a matter of doubt to any far-sighted reader of human nature.

Alice was by nature exact and conscientious as to all rules, forms, and observances. Her pronunciation, whether of English or French, was critically perfect; her hand-writing and composition were faultless to a comma. She was an enthusiastic and thorough maintainer of all the boundaries and forms of good society and of churchly devotion. Jim, without being in any sense really immoral or wicked, was a sort of privileged Arab, careering in and out through the boundaries of all departments, shocking respectable old prejudices and fluttering reverential usages, talking slang and making light of dignitaries with a free and easy handling that was alarming.

But it is a fact that very correct people, who would not violate in their own persons one of the convenances, are often exceedingly amused and experience a peculiar pleasure in seeing them tossed hither and thither by somebody else. Nothing is so tiresome as perfect correctness, and we all know that everything that amuses us and makes us laugh lies outside of it; and Alice, if the truth were to be told, liked Jim all the better for the very things in which he was most unlike herself. Well, such being the state of the garrison on the one side, what was the position of the attacking party?

Jim had gone home discontented at not having a private interview with Alice, but more and more resolved, with every revolving hour since the accession of good fortune which had given him a settled position, that he would have a home of his own forthwith, and that the queen of that home should be Alice Van Arsdel. She must not, she could not, she would not say him Nay; and if she did, he wouldn't take No for an answer. He would have her, if he had to serve for her as long as Jacob did for Rachel. But when Jim remembered how many times he had persuaded Alice to his own way, how many favors she had granted him, he was certain that it was not in her to refuse. He had looked with new interest at the advertisements of houses to let, and the furniture stores for the last few days had worn a new and suggestive aspect. He had commenced transactions with regard to parlor furniture, and actually bought a pair of antique brass andirons, which he was sure would be just the thing for their fireside. Then he had bought an engagement ring, which lay snugly ensconced in its satin case in a corner of his vest pocket, and he was inly resolved that he would make to himself a chance to lodge it on the proper finger in the next twenty-four hours. How he was to get an interview did not yet appear; but he trusted to Providence. It is a fact on record, that before the twenty-four hours were up the deed was done, and Jim and Alice were engaged; but it came about in a way far different from any foreseen by any party, as we shall proceed to show.

CHAPTER XLV.

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

It wanted yet twenty minutes to eight o'clock, and Jim was sitting alone in the glow of the evening fireside. The warm, red light, flickering and shadowing, made the room seem like a mysterious grotto. Jim, in best party trim, sat gazing dreamily into the fire, turning the magic ring now and then in his vest pocket, and looking at his watch at intervals, while the mysterious rites of the toilet were going on upstairs.

Alice had never made a more elaborate or more careful toilet. Did she want to precipitate that which she said to herself she dreaded? Certainly she did not spare one possible attraction. She evidently saw no reason, under present circumstances, why she should not make herself look as well as she could.

As the result of the whole day's agitations and discussions, she had come to the conclusion that if Jim had anything to say she would listen to it advisedly, and take it into mature consideration. So she braided her long, dark hair, and crowned herself therewith, and then earrings and brooches came twinkling out here and there like stars, and bits of ribbon and velvet fluttered hither and thither, and fell into wonderfully apposite places, and the woman grew and brightened before the glass, as a picture under the hands of the artist.

It wanted yet a quarter of an hour of the time for the carriage, when there came a light fluff of gauzy garments, and the two party goddesses floated in in all misty splendor, and seemed to fill the whole room with the flutter of dresses.

Alice was radiant; her eyes were never more brilliant, and she was full of that subtle brightness which comes from the tremor of fully-awakened feeling. She was gayer than was her usual wont as she swept about the room and courteseyed with much solemnity to Jim, and turned herself round and round after the manner of a revolving figure in the shop windows.

Suddenly—and none of them knew how—there was a quick flash; the gauzy robe had swept into the fire, and, before any of them could speak, the dress was in flames. There was a scream, an utterance of agony from all parties at once, and Eva was just doing the most fatal thing possible in rushing desperately towards her sister, when Jim came between them, caught the woolen cloth from the table, and wrapped it around Alice; then, taking her in his arms, he laid her on the sofa, and crushed out the fire, beating it with his hands, and tearing the burning fragments away and casting them under foot. It all passed in one fearful, awe-struck moment, while Eva stood still, with the very shadow of death upon her, and saw Jim fighting back the fire, which in a moment or two was entirely extinguished. Alice had fainted, and Jim and Eva looked at each other as people do who have just seen death rising up between them.

"She is safe now," said Jim, as he stood there, pale as death and quivering from head to foot, while the floor around was strewed with the blackened remains of the gauzy material which he had torn away. "She is all right," he added; "the cloth has saved her throat and lungs."

It seemed now the most natural thing in the world that Jim should lay Alice's head upon his arm and administer restoratives; and, when she opened her eyes, that he should call her his darling, his life, his love. They had been in the awful valley of the shadow together—that valley where all that is false perishes and drops off, and what is true becomes the only reality. Alice felt that she loved Jim—that she belonged to him, and she did not dispute his right to speak as he did, and to care for her as one had a right to care for his own.

"Well," said Eva, drawing a long breath, when the bell rang and the carriage was announced, "we cannot go to the party, that is certain; and, Jim, tell him to go for Doctor Campbell. Mary, bring down a wrapper; we'll slip it over your torn finery, Alice, for the present," said Eva, endeavoring to be practical and self-possessed, though with a little hysterical sob every now and then betraying the shock to her nerves. "Then there must be a note sent to Aunt Maria, or what will she think?" pursued Eva, when Alice had been made comfortable on the sofa, where Jim was devoting himself to her.

"Don't, pray, tell all about it," said Alice. "One doesn't want to become the talk of all New York."

"I'll tell her that you have met with an accident that will detain you and me, but that you are not dangerous," said Eva, as she wrote her note and sent Mary up with it.

It was not until tranquillity had somewhat settled down on the party that Jim began to feel that his own hands were blistered; for, though a man under strong excitement may handle fire for a while and not feel it, yet nature keeps account and brings in her bill in due season.

"Why, Jim, you brave fellow," said Alice, suddenly raising herself, as she saw an expression of pain on his face, "here I am thinking only of myself, and you are suffering."

"Oh, nothing; nothing at all," said Jim; but Eva and Alice, now thoroughly aroused, were shocked at the state of his hands.

"The doctor will have you to attend to first," said Alice. "You have saved me by sacrificing yourself."

"Thank God for that!" said Jim, fervently.

Well, the upshot of the story is that Eva would not hear of Jim's leaving them that night. Doctor Campbell pronounced that the burns on his hands needed serious attention, and the prospect was that he would be obliged to rest from using them for a day or two.

But these two or three days of hospital care were not on the whole the worst of Jim's life, for Alice insisted on being his amanuensis, and writing his editorials for him, and, as she wrote with the engagement ring sparkling on her finger, Jim thought that he had never seen it appear to so great advantage. It was said that Jim's editorials, that week, had a peculiar vigor and pungency. We should not at all wonder, under the circumstances, if that were the case.

CHAPTER XLVI.

WHAT THEY ALL SAID ABOUT IT.

And so Jim Fellows and Alice Van Arsdel were engaged at last. The reader who has cared to follow the workings of that young lady's mind has doubtless seen from the first that she was on the straight highway to such a result.

Intimate friendship—what the French call "camaraderie"—is, in fact, the healthiest and the best commencement of the love that is needed in married life; because it is more like what the staple of married life must at last come to. It gives opportunity for the knowledge of all those minor phases of character under which a married couple must at last see each other.

Alice and Jim had been side by side in many an every-day undress rehearsal. They had laughed and frolicked together like two children; they had known each other's secrets; they had had their little miffs and tiffs, and had gotten over them; but, through all, there had been a steady increase on Jim's part of that deeper feeling which makes a woman the ideal guide and governor and the external conscience of life. But his habit of jesting, and of talking along the line of his most serious feelings in language running between joke and earnest, had prevented the pathos and the power of what was really deepest in him from making itself felt. There wanted something to call forth the expression of the deep manly feeling that lay at the bottom of his heart. There wanted, on her part, something to change friendship to a warmer feeling. Those few dreadful moments, when they stood under the cloud of a sudden and frightful danger, did more to reveal to them how much they were to each other than years of ordinary acquaintance. It was as if they had crossed the river of death together, and saw each other in their higher natures. Do we not all remember how suffering and danger will bring out in well-known faces a deep and spiritual expression never there before? It was a marked change in the faces of our boys who went to the recent war. Looking in a photograph book, one sees first the smooth lines of a boyish face indicating nothing more than a boy's experience, but, as he turns the following pages, he sees the same face, after suffering and danger and death have called up the strength of the inner man, and imparted a higher and more spiritual expression to the countenance.

The sudden nearness into which they had come to the ever possible tragedy that underlies human life, had given a deep and solemn tenderness to their affection. It was a baptism into the love which is stronger than death. Alice felt her whole heart going out, without a fear or a doubt, in return for the true love that she felt was ready to die for her.

Those few first days that they spent mostly in each other's society, were full of the real, deep, enthusiastic tenderness of that understanding of each other which had suddenly arisen between them.

So, to her confidential female correspondent—the one who had always held her promise to be the first recipient of the news of her engagement—she wrote as follows:

So wrote Alice to her bridesmaid that was to be. Meanwhile, the declared engagement went its way, traveling through the circle, making everywhere its sensation.

We believe there is nothing so generally interesting to human nature as a newly-declared engagement. It is a thing that everybody has an opinion of; and the editorial comments, though they do not go into print, are fully as numerous and as positive as those following a new appointment at Washington.

Especially is this the case where the parties, being long under suspicion and accusation, have denied the impeachment, and vehemently protested that "there was, and there would be, nothing in it," and that "it was only friendship." When, after all the strength of such asseveration, the flag is finally struck, and the suspected parties walk forth openly, hand in hand, what a number of people immediately rise in their own opinion, saying with complacency: "There! what did I tell you? I knew it was so. People may talk as much as they please, they can't deceive me!"

Among the first to receive the intelligence was little Mrs. Betsey, who, having been over with Jack to make a morning call at the Henderson house, had her very cap lifted from her head with amazement at the wonderful news. So, panting with excitement, she rushed back across the way to astonish Miss Dorcas, and burst in upon her, with Jack barking like a storming party in the rear.

"Good gracious, Betsey, what's the matter now?" said Miss Dorcas. "What has happened?"

"Well, what should you think? You can't guess! Jack, be still! stop barking! Stop, sir!"—as Jack ran under a chair in a distant corner of the room, and fired away with contumacious energy.

"Yes, Dorcas, I have such a piece of news! I declare, that dog!—I'll kill him if he don't stop!" and Mrs. Betsey, on her knees, dragged Jack out of his hiding-place, and cuffed him into silence, and then went on with her news, which she determined to make the most of, and let out a bit at a time, as children eat gingerbread.

"Well, now, Betsey, since the scuffle is over between you and Jack, perhaps you will tell me what all this is about," said Miss Dorcas, with dignity.

"Well, Dorcas, it's another engagement; and who do you guess it is? You never will guess in the world, I know; now guess."

"I don't know," said Miss Dorcas, critically surveying Mrs. Betsey over her spectacles, "unless it is you and old Major Galbraith."

"Aren't you ashamed, Dorcas?" said the little old lady, two late pink roses coming in either cheek. "Major Galbraith!—old and deaf and with the rheumatism!"

"Well, you wanted me to guess, and I guessed the two most improbable people in the circle of our acquaintance." Now, Major Galbraith was an old admirer of Mrs. Betsey's youth, an ancient fossil remain of the distant period to which Miss Dorcas and Mrs. Betsey belonged.

He was an ancient bachelor, dwelling in an ancient house on Murray hill, and subsisting on the dry hay of former recollections. Once a year, on Christmas or New Year's, the old major caused himself to be brought carefully in a carriage to the door of the Vanderheyden house, creaked laboriously up the steps, pulled the rusty, jangling old bell, and was shown into the somber twilight of the front parlor, where he paid his respects to the ladies with the high-shouldered, elaborate stateliness and gallantry of a former period. The compliments which the major brought out on these occasions were of the most elaborate and well-considered kind, for he had an abundance of leisure to compose them, and very few ladies to let them off upon. They had, for the parties to whom they were addressed, all the value of those late roses and violets which one now and then finds in the garden, when the last black frosts have picked off the blooms of summer. The main difficulty of the interview always was the fact that the poor major was stone-deaf, and, in spite of both ladies screaming themselves hoarse, he carried away the most obviously erroneous impressions, to last him through the next year. Yet, in ages past, the major had been a man of high fashion, and he was, if one only could get at him, on many accounts better worth talking to than many modern beaux; but as age and time had locked him in a case and thrown away the key, the suggestion of tender relations between him and Mrs. Betsey was impossible enough to answer Miss Dorcas's purpose.

But Mrs. Betsey was bursting to begin on the contents of her news-bag, and so, out it came.

"Well now, Dorcas, if you won't go to being ridiculous, and talking about Major Galbraith, I'll tell you who it is. It's that dear, good Mr. Fellows that got Jack back again for us, and I'm sure I never feel as if I could do enough for him when I think of it, and besides that, he always is so polite and considerate, and talks with one so nicely and is so attentive, seems to think something of you, if you are an old woman, so that I'm glad with all my heart, for I think it's a splendid thing, and she's just the one for him, and do you know I've been thinking a great while that it was going to be? I have noticed signs, and have had my own thoughts, but I didn't let on. I despise people that are always prying and spying and expressing opinions before they know."

This lucid exposition might have proceeded at greater length, had not Miss Dorcas, whose curiosity was now fully roused, cut into the conversation with an air of judicial decision.

"Well now, after all, Betsey, will you have the goodness, since you began to tell the news, to tell it like a reasonable creature? Mr. Fellows is the happy man, you say. Now, who—is—the woman?"

"Oh, didn't I tell you? Why, what is the matter with me to-day? I thought I said Miss Alice Van Arsdel. Won't she make him a splendid wife? and I'm sure he'll make a good husband; he's so kind-hearted. Oh! you ought to have seen how kind he was to Jack that day he brought him back; and such a sight as Jack was, too—all dirt and grease! Why it took Dinah and me at least two hours to get him clean, and there are not many young gentlemen that would be so patient as he was. I never shall forget it of him."

"Patient as who was?" said Miss Dorcas. "I believe Jack was the last nominative case in that sentence; do pray compose yourself, Betsey, and don't take entire leave of your senses."

"I mean Mr. Fellows was patient, of course, you know."

"Well, then, do take a little pains to say what you mean," said Miss Dorcas.

"Well, don't you think it a good thing—and were you expecting it?"

"So far as I know the parties, it's as good a thing as engagements in general," said Miss Dorcas. "They have my very best wishes."

"Well, did you ever think it would come about?"

"No; I never troubled my head with speculations on what plainly is none of my concern," said Miss Dorcas.

It was evident that Miss Dorcas was on the highest and most serene mountain-top of propriety this morning, and all her words and actions indicated that calm superiority to vulgar curiosity which, in her view, was befitting a trained lady. Perhaps a little pique that Betsey had secured such a promising bit of news in advance of herself, added to her virtuous frigidity of demeanor. We are all mortal, and the best of us are apt to undervalue what we did not ourselves originally produce. But if Miss Dorcas wished in a gentle manner to remind Mrs. Betsey that she was betraying too much of an inclination for gossip, she did not succeed. The clock of time had gone back on the dial of the little old lady, and she was as full of chatter and detail as a school-girl, and determined at any rate to make the most of her incidents, and to create a sensation in her sister's mind—for what is more provoking than to have people sit calm and unexcited when we have a stimulating bit of news to tell? It is an evident violation of Christian charity. Mrs. Betsey now drew forth her next card.

"Oh, and, Dorcas! you've no idea. They've been having the most dreadful time over there! Miss Alice has had the greatest escape! The most wonderful providence! It really makes my blood run cold to think of it. Don't you think, she was all dressed to go to Mrs. Wouvermans's party, and her dress caught on fire, and if it hadn't been for Mr. Fellows's presence of mind she might have been burned to death—really burned to death! Only think of it!"

"You don't say so!" said Miss Dorcas, who now showed excitement enough to fully satisfy Mrs. Betsey. "How very dreadful! Why, how was it?"

"Yes—she was passing in front of the fire, in a thin white tarlatan, made very full, with flounces, and it was just drawn in and flashed up like tinder. Mr. Fellows caught the cloth from the table, wrapped her in it and laid her on the sofa, and then tore and beat out the fire with his hands."

"Dear—me! dear—me!" said Miss Dorcas, "how dreadful! But he did just the right thing."

"Yes, indeed; you ought to have seen! Mrs. Henderson showed me what was left of the dress, and it was really awful to see! I could not help thinking, 'In the midst of life we are in death.' All trimmed up with scarlet velvet and bows, and just hanging in rags and tatters, where it had been burned and torn away! I never saw any thing so solemn in my life."

"A narrow escape, certainly," said Miss Dorcas. "And is she not injured at all?"

"Nothing to speak of, only a few slight burns; but poor Mr. Fellows has to have his hands bandaged and dressed every day; but of course he doesn't mind that since he has saved her life. But just think of it, Dorcas, we shall have two weddings, and it'll make two more visiting places. I'm going to tell Dinah all about it," and the little woman fled to the kitchen, with Jack at her heels, and was soon heard going over the whole story again.

Dinah's effusion and sympathy, in fact, were the final refuge of Mrs. Betsey on every occasion, whether of joy or sorrow or perplexity—and between her vigorous exclamations and loud responses, and Jack's running commentary of unrestrained barking, there was as much noise over the announcement as could be made by an average town meeting.

Thus were the tidings received across the way. In the Van Arsdel family, Jim was already an established favorite. Mr. Van Arsdel always liked him as a bright, agreeable evening visitor, and, now that he had acquired a position that promised a fair support, there was no opposition on his part to overcome. Mrs. Van Arsdel was one of the motherly, complying sort of women, generally desirous of doing what the next person to her wanted her to do; and, though she was greatly confused by remembering Alice's decided asseverations that "it never was and never would be anything, and that Jim was not at all the person she ever should think of marrying," yet, since it was evident that she was now determined upon the affair, Mrs. Van Arsdel looked at it on the bright side.

"After all, my dear," she said to her spouse, "if I must lose both my daughters, it's a mercy to have them marry and settle down here in New York, where I can have the comfort of them. Jim will always be an attentive husband and a good family man. I saw that when he was helping us move; but I'm sure I don't know what Maria will say now!"

"No matter what Maria says, my dear," said Mr. Van Arsdel. "It don't make one hair white or black. It's time you were emancipated from Maria."

But Aunt Maria, like many dreaded future evils, proved less formidable on this occasion than had been feared.

The very submissive and edifying manner in which Mr. Jim Fellows had received her strictures and cautions on a former occasion, and the profound respect he had shown for her opinion, had so far wrought upon her as to make her feel that it was really a pity that he was not a young man of established fortune. If he only had anything to live on, why, he might be a very desirable match; and so, when he had a good position and salary, he stood some inches higher in her esteem. Besides this, there was another balm which distilled resignation in the cup of acquiescence, and that was the grand chance it gave her to say, "I told you so." How dear and precious this privilege is to the very best of people, we need not insist. There are times when it would comfort them, if all their dearest friends were destroyed, to be able to say, "I told you so. It's just as I always predicted!" We all know how Jonah, though not a pirate or a cut-throat, yet wished himself dead because a great city was not destroyed, when he had taken the trouble to say it would be. Now, though Alice's engagement was not in any strict sense an evil, yet it was an event which Aunt Maria had always foreseen, foretold and insisted on.

So when, with heart-sinkings and infinite precautions, Mrs. Van Arsdel had communicated the news to her, she was rather relieved at the response given, with a toss of the head and a vigorous sniff:

"Oh, that's no news to me; it's just what I have foreseen all along—what I told you was coming on, and you wouldn't believe it. Now I hope all of you will see that I was right."

"I think," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "that it was Jim's presence of mind in saving her life that decided Alice at last. She always liked him; but I don't think she really loved him till then."

"Well, of course, it was a good thing that there was somebody at hand who had sense to do the right thing, when girls will be so careless; but it wasn't that. She meant to have him all along; and I knew it," said Aunt Maria. "Well, Jim Fellows, after all, isn't the worst match a girl could make, either, now that he has some prospects of his own—but, at any rate, it has turned out just as I said it would. I knew she'd marry him, six months ago, just as well as I know it now, unless you and she listened to my advice then. So now all we have to do is to make the best of it. You've got two weddings on your hands, now Nellie, instead of one, and I shall do all I can to help you. I was out all day yesterday looking at sheeting, and I think that at Shanks & Maynard's is decidedly the firmest and the cheapest, and I ordered three pieces sent home; and I carried back the napkins to Taggart's, and then went rambling off up by the Park to find that woman that does marking."

"I'm sure, Maria, I am ever so much obliged to you," said Mrs. Van Arsdel.

"Well, I hope I'm good for something. Though I'm not fit to be out; I've such a dreadful cold in my head, I can hardly see; and riding in these New York omnibuses always makes it worse."

"Dear Maria, why will you expose yourself in that way?"

"Well, somebody's got to do it—and your judgment isn't worth a fip, Nellie. That sheeting that you were thinking of taking wasn't half so good, and cost six cents a yard more. I couldn't think of having things go that way."

"But I'm sure we don't any of us want you to make yourself sick."

"Oh, I sha'n't be sick. I may suffer; but I sha'n't give up. I'm not one of the kind. If you had the cold in your head that I have, Nellie, you'd be in bed, with both girls nursing you; but that isn't my way. I keep up, and attend to things. I want these things of Angie's to be got up properly, as they ought to be, and there's nobody to do it but me."

And little Mrs. Van Arsdel, used, from long habit, to be thus unceremoniously snubbed, dethroned, deposed, and set down hard by her sister when in full career of labor for her benefit, looked meekly into the fire, and comforted herself with the reflection that it "was just like Maria. She always talked so; but, after all, she was a good soul, and saved her worlds of trouble, and made excellent bargains for her."

CHAPTER XLVII.

"IN THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS."

This article of faith forms a part of the profession of all Christendom, is solemnly recited every Sunday and many week-days in the services of all Christian churches that have a liturgy, whether Roman or Greek or Anglican or Lutheran, and may, therefore, bid fair to pass for a fundamental doctrine of Christianity.

Yet, if narrowly looked into, it is a proposition under which there are more heretics and unbelievers than all the other doctrines of religion put together.

Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, standing, like a mother in Israel, in the most eligible pew of Dr. Cushing's church, has just pronounced these words with all the rest of the Apostles' Creed, which she has recited devoutly twice a day every Sunday for forty years or more. She always recited her creed in a good, strong, clear voice, designed to rebuke the indolent or fastidious who only mumbled or whispered, and made a deep reverence in the proper place at the name of Jesus; and somehow it seemed to feel as if she were witnessing a good confession, and were part and parcel with the protesting saints and martyrs that, in blue and red and gold, were shining down upon her through the painted windows. This solemn standing up in her best bonnet and reciting her Christian faith every Sunday, was a weekly testimony against infidelity and schism and lax doctrines of all kinds, and the good lady gave it with unfaltering regularity. Nothing would have shocked her more than to have it intimated to her that she did not believe the articles of her own faith; and yet, if there was anything in the world that Mrs. Maria Wouvermans practically didn't believe in, and didn't mean to believe in, it was "the forgiveness of sins."

As long as people did exactly right, she had fellowship and sympathy with them. When they did wrong, she wished to have nothing more to do with them. Nay, she seemed to consider it a part of public justice and good morals to clear her skirts from all contact with sinners. If she heard of penalties and troubles that befell evil doers, it was with a face of grim satisfaction. "It serves them right—just what they ought to expect. I don't pity them in the least," were familiar phrases with her. If anybody did her an injury, crossed her path, showed her disrespect or contumely, she seemed to feel as free and full a liberty of soul to hate them as if the Christian religion had never been heard of. And, in particular, for the sins of women, Aunt Maria had the true ingrain Saxon ferocity which Sharon Turner describes as characteristic of the original Saxon female in the earlier days of English history, when the unchaste woman was pursued and beaten, starved and frozen, from house to house, by the merciless justice of her sisters.

It is the same spirit that has come down through English law and literature, and shows itself in the old popular ballad of "Jane Shore," where, without a word of pity, it is recorded how Jane Shore, the king's mistress, after his death, first being made to do public penance in a white sheet, was thereafter turned out to be frozen and starved to death in the streets, and died miserably in a ditch, from that time called Shoreditch. A note tells us that there was one man who, moved by pity, at one time sheltered the poor creature and gave her food, for which he was thrown into prison, to the great increase of her sorrow and misery.

It was in a somewhat similar spirit that Mrs. Wouvermans regarded all sinning women. Her uniform ruling in such cases was that they were to be let alone by all decent people, and that if they fell into misery and want, it was only just what they deserved, and she was glad of it. What business had they to behave so? In her view, all efforts to introduce sympathy and mercy into prison discipline—all forbearance and pains-taking with the sinful and lost in all places in society—was just so much encouragement given to the criminal classes, and one of the lax humanitarian tendencies of the age. It is quite certain that had Mrs. Wouvermans been a guest in old times at a certain Pharisee's house, where the Master allowed a fallen woman to kiss His feet, she would have joined in saying: "If this man were a prophet he would have known what manner of woman this is that toucheth him, for she is a sinner." There was certainly a marked difference of spirit between her and that Jesus to whom she bowed so carefully whenever she repeated the creed.

On this particular Sunday, Eva had come to church with her aunt, and was going to dine with her, intent on a mission of Christian diplomacy.

Some weeks had now passed since she left Maggie in the mission retreat, and it was the belief of the matron there, and the attending clergyman, that a change had taken place in her, so radical and so deep that, if now some new and better course of life were opened to her, she might, under careful guidance, become a useful member of society. Whatever views modern skepticism may entertain in regard to what is commonly called the preaching of the gospel, no sensible person conversant with actual facts can help acknowledging that it does produce in some cases the phenomenon called conversion, and that conversion, when real, is a solution of all difficulties in our days as it was in those of the first apostles.

The first Christians were gathered from the dregs of society, and the Master did not fear to say to the Pharisees, "The publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you;" and St. Paul addresses those who he says had been thieves and drunkards and revilers and extortioners, with the words, "Ye are washed; ye are sanctified; ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of God."

It is on the power of the Divine spirit to effect such changes, even in the most hopeless and forlorn subjects, that Christians of every name depend for success; and by this faith such places as the Home for the Fallen are undertaken and kept up.

What people look for, and labor for, as is proved by all experience, is more liable to happen than what they do not expect and do not labor for. The experiment of Mr. James was attended by many marked and sudden instances of conversion and permanent change of character. Maggie had been entrapped and drawn in by Mother Moggs in one of those paroxysms of bitter despair which burned in her bosom, when she saw, as she thought, every respectable door of life closed upon her and the way of virtue shut up beyond return. When she thought how, while she was cast out as utterly beyond hope, the man who had betrayed her and sinned with her was respected, flattered, rich, caressed, and joined in marriage to a pure and virtuous wife, a blind and keen sense of injustice awoke every evil or revengeful passion within her. "If they won't let me do good, I can do mischief," she thought, and she was now ready to do all she could to work misery and ruin for a world that would give her no place to do better. Mother Moggs saw Maggie's brightness and smartness, and the remains of her beauty. She flattered and soothed her. To say the truth, Mother Moggs was by no means all devil. She had large remains of that motherly nature which is common to warm-blooded women of easy virtue. She took Maggie's part, was indignant at her wrongs, and offered her a shelter and a share in her business. Maggie was to tend her bar; and by her talents and her good looks and attractions Mother Moggs hoped to double her liquor sales. What if it did ruin the men? What if it was selling them ruin, madness, beggary—so much the better;—had they not ruined her?

If Maggie had been left to her own ways, she might have been the ruin of many. It was the Christ in the heart of a woman who had the Christian love and Christian courage to go after her and seek for her, that brought to her salvation. The invisible Christ must be made known through human eyes; he must speak through a voice of earthly love, and a human hand inspired by his spirit must be reached forth to save.

The sight of Eva's pure, sweet face in that den of wickedness, the tears of pity in her eyes, the imploring tones of her voice, had produced an electric revulsion in Maggie's excitable nature. She was not, then, forsaken: she was cared for, loved, followed even into the wilderness, by one so far above her in rank and station. It was an illustration of what Christian love was, which made it possible to believe in the love of Christ. The hymns, the prayers, that spoke of hope and salvation, had a vivid meaning in the light of this interpretation. The enthusiasm of gratitude that arose first towards Eva, overflowed and bore the soul higher towards a Heavenly Friend.

Maggie was now longing to come back and prove by her devotion and obedience her true repentance, and Eva had decided to take her again. With two weddings impending in the family, she felt that Maggie's skill with the needle and her facility in matters pertaining to the female toilet might do good service, and might give her the sense of usefulness—the strength that comes from something really accomplished.

Her former experience made her careful, however, of those sore and sensitive conditions which attend the return to virtue in those who have sinned, and which are often severest where there is the most moral vitality, and she was anxious to prevent any repetition on Aunt Maria's part of former unwise proceedings. All the other habitués of the house partook of her own feeling; Alice and Angie were warmly interested for the poor girl; and if Aunt Maria could be brought to tolerate the arrangement, the danger of a sudden domiciliary visit from her attended with inflammatory results might be averted.

So Eva was very sweet and very persuasive in her manner to-day, for Aunt Maria had been devoting herself so entirely to the family service during the few weeks past, that she felt in some sort under a debt of obligation to her. The hardest person in the world to manage is a sincere, willful, pig-headed, pertinacious friend who will insist on doing you all sorts of kindnesses in a way that plagues about as much as it helps you.

But Eva was the diplomatist of the family; the one with the precise mixture of the suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re. She had hitherto carried her points with the good lady in a way that gave her great advantage, for Aunt Maria was one of those happily self-complacent people who do not fail to arrogate to themselves the after the most strenuous efforts, to hinder, and Eva's credit of all the good things that they have not been able, housekeeping and social successes, so far, were quite a feather in her cap. So, after dinner, Eva began with:

"Well, you know, Aunt Maria, what with these two weddings coming on, there is to be a terrible pressure of work—both coming the week after Easter, you see. So," she added quickly, "I think it quite lucky that I have found Maggie and got her back again, for she is one of the quickest and best seamstresses that I know of." Aunt Maria's brow suddenly darkened. Every trace of good-humor vanished from her face as she said:

"Now do tell me, Eva, if you are going to be such a fool, when you were once fairly quit of that girl, to bring her back into your family."

"Yes, Aunt, I thought it my Christian duty to take care of her, and see that she did not go to utter ruin."

"I don't know what you mean," said Aunt Maria. "I should say she had gone there now. Do you think it your duty to turn your house into a Magdalen asylum?"

"No, I do not; but I do think it is our duty to try to help and save this one girl whom we know—who is truly repentant, and who wants to do well."

"Repentant!" said Aunt Maria in a scornful tone. "Don't tell me. I know their tricks, and you'll just be imposed on and get yourself into trouble. I know the world, and I know all about it." Eva now rose and played her last card. "Aunt Maria," she said, "You profess to be a Christian and to follow the Saviour who came to seek and save the lost, and I don't think you do right to treat with such scorn a poor girl that is trying to do better."

"It's pretty well of you, Miss, to lecture me in this style! Trying to do better!" said Aunt Maria, "then what did she go off for, when she was at your house and you were doing all you could for her? It was just that she wanted to go to the bad."

"She went off, Aunt Maria," said Eva, "because she overheard all you said about her, the day you were at my house. She heard you advising me to send her mother away on her account, and saying that she was a disgrace to me. No wonder she ran off."

"Well, serves her right for listening! Listeners never hear any good of themselves," said Aunt Maria.

"Now, Aunty," said Eva, "nobody has more respect for your good qualities than I have, or more sense of what we all owe you for your kindness to us; but I must tell you fairly that, now I am married, you must not come to my house to dictate about or interfere with my family arrangements. You must understand that Harry and I manage these matters ourselves and will not allow any interference; and I tell you now that Maggie is to be at our house, and under my care, and I request that you will not come there to say or do anything which may hurt her mother's feelings or hers."

"Mighty fine," said Aunt Maria, rising in wrath, "when it has come to this, that servants are preferred before me!"

"It has not come to that, Aunt Maria. It has simply come to this: that I am to be sole mistress in my own family, and sole judge of what it is right and proper to do; and when I need your advice I shall ask it; but I don't want you to offer it unless I do."

Having made this concluding speech while she was putting on her bonnet and shawl, Eva now cheerfully wished her aunt good afternoon, and made the best of her way down-stairs.

"I don't see, Eva, how you could get up the courage to face your aunt down in that way," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, to whom Eva related the interview.

"Dear Mamma, it'll do her good. She will be as sweet as a rose after the first week of indignation. Aunt Maria is a sensible woman, after all, and resigns herself to the inevitable. She worries and hectors you, my precious Mammy, because you will let her. If you'd show a brave face, she wouldn't do it; but it isn't in you, you poor, lovely darling, and so she just preys upon you; but Harry and I are resolved to make her stand and give the countersign when she comes to our camp."

And it is a fact that, a week after, Aunt Maria spent a day with Eva in the balmiest state of grace, and made no allusion whatever to the conversation above cited. Nothing operates so healthfully on such moral constitutions as a good dose of certainty.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE PEARL CROSS.

Every thoughtful person who exercises the least supervision over what goes on within, is conscious of living two distinct lives—the outward and the inward.

The external life is positive, visible, definable; easily made the subject of conversation. The inner life is shy, retiring, most difficult to be expressed in words, often inexplicable, even to the subject of it, yet no less a positive reality than the outward.

We have not succeeded in the picture of our Eva unless we have shown her to have one of those sensitive moral organizations, whose nature it is to reflect deeply, to feel intensely, and to aspire after a high moral ideal.

If we do not mistake the age we live in, the perplexities and anxieties of such natures form a very large item in our modern life.

It is said that the Christian religion is losing its hold on society. On the contrary, we believe there never was a time when faith in Christianity was so deep and all-pervading, and when it was working in so many minds as a disturbing force.

The main thing which is now perplexing modern society, is the effort which is making to reduce the teachings of the New Testament to actual practice in life and to regulate society by them. There is no skepticism as to the ends sought by Jesus in human life. Nobody doubts that love is the fulfilling of the law, and that to do as we would be done by, applied universally, would bring back the golden age, if ever such ages were.

But the problem that meets the Christian student, and the practical person who means to live the Christian life, is the problem of redemption and of self-sacrifice.

In a world where there is always ruin and misery, where the inexperienced are ensnared and the blind misled, and where fatal and inexorable penalties follow every false step, there must be a band of redeemers, seekers and savers of the lost. There must be those who sacrifice ease, luxury and leisure, to labor for the restoration of the foolish and wicked who have sold their birthright and lost their inheritance; and here is just the problem that our age and day present to the thoughtful person who, having professed, in whatever church or creed, to be a Christian, wishes to make a reality of that profession.

The night that Eva had spent in visiting the worst parts of New York had been to her a new revelation of that phase of paganism which exists in our modern city life, within sound of hundreds of church bells of every denomination. She saw authorized as a regular trade, and protected by law, the selling of that poisoned liquor which brings on insanity worse than death; which engenders idiocy, and the certainty of vicious propensities in the brain of the helpless unborn infant; which is the source of all the poverty, and more than half the crime, that fills alms-houses and prisons, and of untold miseries and agonies to thousands of families. She saw woman degraded as the minister of sin and shame; the fallen and guilty Eve, forever plucking and giving to Adam the forbidden fruit whose mortal taste brings death into the world; and her heart had been stirred by the sight of those multitudes of poor ruined wrecks of human beings, men and women, that she had seen crowding in to that midnight supper, and by the earnest pleadings of faith and love that she had heard in the good man's prayers for them. She recalled his simple faith, his undaunted courage in thus maintaining this forlorn hope in so hopeless a region, and she could not rest satisfied with herself, doing nothing to help.

In talking with Mr. James on his prospects, he had said that he very much wished to enlarge this Home so as to put there some dormitories for the men who were willing to take the pledge to abandon drinking, where they could find shelter and care until some kind of work could be provided for them. He stated further that he wished to connect with the enterprise a farm in the country where work could be found for both men and women, of a kind which would be remunerative, and which might prove self-supporting.

Eva reflected with herself whether she had anything to give or to do for a purpose so sacred. Their income was already subject to a strict economy. The little elegancies and adornments of her house were those that are furnished by thought and care rather than by money. Even with the most rigorous self-scrutiny, Eva could not find fault with the home philosophy by which their family life had been made attractive and delightful, because she said and felt that her house had been a ministry to others. It had helped to make others stronger, more cheerful, happier.

But when she brought Maggie away from the Home, she longed to send back some helpful token to those earnest laborers.

On revising her possessions, she remembered that, once, in the days when she was a rich and rather self-indulgent daughter of luxury, she had spent the whole of one quarter's allowance in buying for herself a pearl cross. It cost her not even a sacrifice, for when with a kiss or two she confessed her extravagance to her father, he only pinched her cheek playfully, told her not to do so again, and gave a check for the amount. There it lies, at this moment, in Eva's hands; and as she turns it abstractedly round and round, and marks the play of light on the beautiful pearls, she thinks earnestly what that cross means, and wonders that she should ever have worn it as a mere bauble.

Does it not mean that man's most generous Friend, the highest, the purest, the sweetest nature that ever visited this earth, was agonized, tortured, forsaken, and left to bleed life away, unpitied and unrelieved, for love of us and of all sinning, suffering humanity? Suddenly the words came with overpowering force to her mind: "He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves."

Immediately she resolved that she would give this cross to the sacred work of saving the lost. She resolved to give it secretly—without the knowledge even of her husband. The bauble was something personal to herself that never would be missed or inquired for, and she felt about such an offering that reserve and sacredness which is proper to natures of great moral delicacy. With the feeling she had at this moment, it was as much an expression of personal loyalty and devotion to Jesus Christ as was the precious alabaster vase of Mary. It satisfied, moreover, a kind of tender, vague remorse that she had often felt; as if, in her wedded happiness and her quiet home, she were too blessed, and had more than her share of happiness in a world where there were such sufferings and sorrows.

She had always had a longing to do something towards the world's work, and, if nothing more, to be a humble helper of the brave and heroic spirits who press on in the front ranks of this fight for the good.

She did not wish to be thanked or praised, as if the giving up of such a toy for such a cause were a sacrifice worth naming; for, in the mood that she was in, it was no sacrifice—it was a relief to an over-charged feeling, an act of sacramental union between her soul and the Saviour who gave himself wholly for the lost. So she put the velvet case in its box, and left it at Mr. James's door, with the following little note: