pression was very different. They beamed upon you like a summer day, clear, untroubled, and yet with a soul in their depths, all the more visible from their very clearness. His hair was of the same golden shade with Marion's flowing tresses, and it clustered in short, thick curls around his fair open brow. There was something indescribably sweet about his mouth, and his smile seemed to kindle his whole face.

"I am very glad to see you, cousin Isa," he said, very quietly, in a rich, musical voice, coming toward me, with his extended hand. My fingers tur-touched his, for a single instant, and I then drew them back, trembling so I could scarcely stand. My face crimsoned so deeply that my father noticed it, and said kindly

that I remained for a half hour absorbed in the entemplation. I did not speculate on what stars might think or say of me; I had no desire display this loveliness to the world, but I miled as I gazed on, in the very intensity of my warship for the beautiful, wherever and whenever it met my vision. At length I drew out the den bodkins which fastened my luxuriant hair, and let it fall in a cloud about my shoulders. Huberto, I had been contented with the clumsy braids of my English nurse Barbara; now I was rescived to arrange it myself. I wound it about my head, in heavy, glossy bandeaux, like a ban; then I fastened it with gleaming golden pis, and placed on one side, drooping to my neck, a bunch of blood-red carnations. My figure was what an empress' ought to be; full, tall, and perfectly developed. I robed myself in a closely Etting waist of crimson velvet, that rich, deep crimson which resembles in hue rare old wine, manting over a silver goblet. With this, I wore a long, flowing skirt of merino, precisely the same in shade. Around my neck and arms I clasped emmaments of pure jet, and then, standing before my mirror, I surveyed my work, and experienced my very first emotion of pride in my own loveli-out ness. I awaited my father's coming impatiently, for I longed to tell him of the discovery I had made.

It was late before he arrived. I ordered supper in the magnificent old drawing-room, for that night I had the tastes of a princess. The room was furnished with lounges and ottomans of crimson velvet, heavily inwrought with gold. The walls displayed the same blending of gold and crimson, and the full-length mirrors multiplied it with endless repetitions.

"You must not mind. It is a shy little puss. Isa never saw but one visitor before in her lifeeh, Isa?"

I blushed still more deeply, and he laughingly rejoined

"A sore subject, is n't it? Well, I won't discuss it any longer. I'm hungry as a Polar bear. Could your ladyship give us some supper?" Glad of an excuse to leave the room, I went to see that the tea-things were arranged. My father followed me, anxious, I suppose, to learn the result of his experiment in trying to give me pleasure.

"Well, Isa?"

I turned round and looked at him inquiringly— "Well, papa, what did you bring him home for ?" "What? why he is your cousin, on his mother's side, and now she is dead, your nearest relative except your father. Have you so many friends you can afford to throw them away?"

"Oh yes, papa. There are you and Barbara,

"And Marion Illsley," said my father, laugh

ing. "You have surely established your case now, but I want you and Reginald to get on well together, nevertheless. Perhaps, if you are a good girl, he will come to see you often, and I must be away from home more than usual this winter."

I threw myself down among the crimson cush-andions, and leaning my head on my hand, abandoned myself to a profound revery. I tried to amon into my presence a vision of my mother, as she must have been, young, beautiful, radiant. The lamp-light drifted over me, almost with the fall brilliance of sunshine, and closing my eyes the long lashes veiled my cheeks. Absorbed in my own fancies, I heard no sound, until my father's voice broke upon the stillness.

"This is my only child, Sir Reginald-Isabella Hatchinson. I call her Isa, and so may you, since you are cousins."

I sprang instantly to my feet, and encountered the admiring gaze of the first young gentleman to whose voice I had ever listened. Reginald Percy was beautiful as morning, but it was a genuinely English beauty. He had eyes of the same deep blue with Marion Illsley's, but the ex

"How old is he, papa?"

"Nineteen, puss. Only four years older than you, but three times four years wiser."

I went back with an impression that I should dislike my cousin, in spite of his beauty; but there was no resisting the frank cordiality of his manner. Tea was brought in, arranged with an eye to harmony of colors, and artistic effect, that struck Reginald instantly. Indeed, he seemed in a humor to be charmed with every thing. The great rambling house; the cornices carved o'er

and o'er with lilies; the antique mirrors in their cumbrous frames, each and all seemed a perpetual source of delight.

"I must see them all by daylight-may I not, Mr. Hutchinson ?" he said, when he rose to go.

His words were addressed to my father, but his glance sought my face.

I hardly comprehended his meaning, and I sa in silence.

"I know it is wrong," he continued, "unfair I know you have seen no one else; but for al that, you can tell whether you love me. If yo do, you never could love another, and it is n harm. I do not need any jealousy, or competi

"You must ask Isa! Hutchinson-house is her tion, to make me feel your grace and beauty castle." Darling, do you love me better than you

Oh, I thought at that moment my heart woul break with its wild rapture. This, then, was love I could not speak. I turned my face toward him. My long lashes veiled the joy beaming in my downcast eyes, but the tell-tale cheeks, over which they drooped, were crimson with blushes.

"I shall be very happy," I stammered blush-father?" ingly; and after that Reginald Percy was my frequent visitor. He came often, when my father was away, and we used to wander, hand-inhand, through the great, desolate house, singing snatches of old ballads, and talking of every quaint and wonderful fancy which haunted our wayward brain. He used often to bring me flowers, and one day, as he fastened a cluster of white lilies , in my heavy braids, he said, earnestly,

"How beautiful you are, Isa. You are the very handsomest person I ever saw, except Marion, and she's so different."

"Marion who?" I inquired, with a forced and painful calmness.

"Marion Illsley. Good heavens, Isa, how pale you are! Are you ill? Lean on me, child-why, how you tremble. Isa, what is the matter?" "Nothing," I answered, as soon as I could speak. "It was only a sudden faintness. I am better now." "Are you subject to these turns, Isa?" "Not very, but the room was so warm." From that day he spoke no more of Marion Illsley, whether it was that he never thought of her, or that he fancied the subject was distasteful. Through the whole winter he came to see me almost daily. One day in the early spring, he came in thoughtfully.

"Isa," he said, "do you think me so very young?"

Young! No, indeed," I answered, laughingly. "You are four whole years older than I am, and I feel old enough for one of Methuselah's near relatives."

"True, I am four years older than you, and I shall be twenty in a few months. I think I may speak. Sit down, Isa, and listen seriously. Young as I am, I have seen a great many beautiful women, and had as many fancies as there are beads in your rosary, but this is so different. Isa, if I loved you less I could tell it to you better. I seem to live only when I am here with you. You can thrill me so with every tone of your voice, every look of your great black eyes; I never did, never can feel so for any other. Isa, is it all in

vain?"

"You do love me," he cried eagerly, and clasping his arms about me, drew me close to his beating heart.

"Say the words, Isa, I want to hear themsay Reginald, I love you;' nay, better than that, say Reginald, I will be your wife.”

I looked up timidly from the shelter of his arms, scarcely daring to trust my voice to utter the words for which he waited.

66

‘Reginald,” I said, firmly, "dearest Reginald, I love you, and I will be your wife.'"

"Heaven bless my darling," was the fervently uttered reply; and then drawing me still more fondly to his breast, we sat there for a long hour, in an eloquent silence, our hearts thrilling with this new bliss, whose nectar we had just begun to quaff.

"I have always loved you since that first night," he murmured at length, leaning over me. "Isa, you don't know how beautiful you looked then. It was something so new, so fresh, so like one of those Arabian tales I used to delight in, to come to this great eyrie-looking house, and find in its very midst a sleeping beauty. And then, when you sprang to your feet, you were so full of sparkling contrasts, with your olive complexion, your flashing black eyes, and your glittering black hair; your crimson cheeks, and the dress scarcely warmer or deeper in its hue. You were so unlike every thing I had ever seen before. I almost thought I had gone to sleep in England, and woke up in the times of good Haroun al Ras chid, in some palace of the Barmecides. Ever since then I have loved you, and now my beautiful vision is my very own. This will not last, Isa. I am too wildly happy. There will come some great trouble!"

I laughed at his fears then, and for months after ward, while the short days of winter lengthened into the spring, and the trees in the park grew

fall of buds and blossoms in the early summer. Ce day in July I was quite alone. Reginald ind some important business to transact, and I uld not see him till the evening, and my father ad gone out. There came up a fearful storm. at once the sky grew black as night. The vind moaned and growled through the trees in the park; and ever and anon some fierce flash digiming would show me their scathed and ring trunks. Then the solemn thunder-tones wald reverberate, like the crash of invisible ary. I stood in the window of my "Queen'saber," as I had been accustomed to call By room from early childhood, watching the storm. Perhaps I had never been more wildly happy. Every shriek of the wind fell on my ear Eke a shout of exultation, in which I longed to jin. My eyes kindled with a gleam of delight, and I fairly clasped my hands together in ecstacy. denly the door of my room was pushed open, and my father staggered across the threshold. I sprang from the window, and supported him in

my arms.

It has come," he gasped, faintly. "The

Com-the sudden death. It has followed me for
years ever since I so deeply wronged my beau-
tiful Inez. It has come. Always its shadow has
leen beside me in the street-in the fields, and
bere in this house, where she should have been
mistress, Hold me tenderly, Isa. Your love is
Ey comfort to the last. Look in the casket I
pare you, should any strive to take away your
beritage. I shall be at peace now. God has for-
given me,
and even Inez will not turn away when
I stand by her side in heaven!"

He was silent for a moment-there was a fear-
fal lull in the storm-a deathly stillness which
you could almost see.
Not a bough shivered even
on the aspen trees-it was hushed-calm.

were huddled together in a distant apartment. I had no thought of striving to awake him. I wished no witnesses. I knew he was dead. In that hour it was my only thought-the one black cloud, shutting out all else of life. I held him there for hours. Beside that one thought all was emptiness. I sat there until the voices of the storm were hushed, and the broad, full beams of the July moon poured in at the window, flooded the great room, and bathed the dead man's brow. Then I looked up, and Reginald entered.

"What is this, Isa?" he said, as he advanced to my side.

My answer was but the utterance of one thought" He is dead!”

Reginald Percy bent over me, and laid his hand upon my father's forehead. "Good heavens, Isa, what is this? He has been dead for hours. He is cold and stark. We must have a physician instantly. We must know how he died. And you have been alone here all this time? There, I will bring a pillow. Just rest his head down here, and get up yourself."

‘Thank you,” I said quietly, but resolutely"I am not at all tired. I will hold him until the physician shall have come." "But, Isa!"

"Reginald, I shall hold my father."

He saw that I was resolved, and left the room. Without alarming the servants, he went out, and returned in a few moments with a light and a physician. Then I was forced to submit to have him taken from me and laid upon a couch. Dr. Hamilton had, it seemed, known both my father and my grandfather. He called my father's disease by some learned medical name, which to this day I cannot remember. He said he must have been secretly struggling with it for years, and

"They are waiting," he whispered, with a look that it was only strange it had not brought death

which was too peaceful for terror.

Who are waiting, father?"

The spirits—those unseen ones that ride upon

the storm. When they move again, I must go with them. Hush, it is time!"

His hand clasped mine in a convulsive pressare. A sudden blast swept, like a tempest, the boughs of all the trees, till they gave forth a prolonged wail. There was a sudden flash of lightning-a deafening thunder-crash, and 'mid the glare my eyes sought my father's face. He was dead!

I do not know how long the storm continued. I heeded it no longer. The servants seldom came to me unless they were summoned, and now terrified by the unusual violence of the storm, they

or madness long before-that the very intensity of his struggles against it was why death came so suddenly at last.

"Its cause must have been some severe grief or mental trouble," he concluded, "it could have originated in no other way."

I listened to his words with a faint shudder, and then turning, as he left the room, I buried my face in Reginald's bosom.

"You are all now," I whispered, tremblingly. "I know it, Isa," was his low reply-"I feel it, and I am worthy as love can make me. you are wet, poor child-how is this?"

But

"My father came in wet in a half hour after the storm commenced, and since then I have been holding him in my arms."

'Reginald," I said, "why was not your father passionate, and yet caressing-spoken, as if to here when

"At the funeral? Is that what you mean, and he sprang upon his horse, and waved his hand. have not strength to say, my Isa?"

CHAPTER II.

The next morning I wandered thoughtfully through the house, dreaming of the past. It was just a year ago, that very day, that I had first seen Reginald. Just a year ago, my father had gayly entered, introducing him to his petted child. Now, the sunshine fell through the stained glass windows of the chapel, upon a marble cross, on which was sculptured "Grenville Hutchinson-tat thirty-seven." Reginald, the proud, handsome boy, the stranger, was all I had left; dearer than all the memories of the past, all the promises of the future. He was twenty now. In ten short months would come his twenty-first birthday, and then he had said I should be his bride. Oh, would the shadow fall where the sunshine ought to lie? Saying over his name, could I not still the wretched pain at my heart?

It was ten o'clock. I knew I should see none but him, and for that one day I had put off my deep mourning robes, and attired myself in the same garments I had worn when I first met him. The golden pins were in my hair, the blood-red carnations drooped to my shoulder, but my cheeks no longer rivalled the crimson of my velvet robe. The bells of the old oaken clock, standing in the broad landing of the corner stairway, chimed the hour, and I sprang to the door. The moments passed on-it was eleven-twelve! He came not, and all the while the weight on my heart grew heavier, the shadow darker betwixt me and the sunshine.

It was night. The drawing-room was brilliantly lighted. A faint hope began to steal back to my heart. Perhaps his father had employed him all day, and he would come to me then! I threw myself down on the lounge, and strove to await him calmly. The room was the same as when I had awaited my father there, one year before. The same velvet cushions supported me, light floated over me from the same lamps, and the same fancy picture of a beautiful Italian singing girl, looked down on me from the other side of the room, with its soft, bright eyes. But there were changes in myself. The waist, round which was clasped the same girdle, had grown thinner, the whole figure slighter, and the cheeks, over which my long lashes drooped, were pale and colorless as marble. But the greatest change of all was in the inner life, where the dreamy, wandering heart of girlhood, had become fullnurtured, proud, anguished, loving, womanly.

I heard the outer door open, as I lay there. With an effort I lay still and listened. There

feeble-not the light, springing tread of Reginald Percy. I held my breath-there was a tap upon the door, and old Barbara entered.

“It is for you, Miss Isabella," she said, putting a letter in my hand. "The boy said no answer was expected."

She left the room. I held the letter up to the light and looked at it. I knew those bold, free characters must have been traced by Reginald. I had never before chanced to see his writing. We had been so constantly together, there was no need of letters. I looked at the direction for a moment, and then pressed it to my lips. Then I glanced at the seal-it was a couchant leopard. I had seen it on a ring of Reginald's, and he told me it was the coat of arms of the Percy family. For some time I held it, fearing to break the seal, but at last I roused myself, and opened it. A closely written sheet of paper lay before me, and I read these words

"Isa, my own darling, my beloved; for this once I must call you mine. We must not meet again. You are lost to me forever. I know I am telling this abruptly, but I cannot help it. My fancy pictures you before me, falling helpless to the floor as you read, or weeping wildly, passionately, with none to comfort you. One moment, I am resolved to come to you myself to help you bear it; then my better judgment tells me it will be worse for us both. Oh, God only knows how I have loved you; but I must not speak of it to-day. My sufferings are nothing if I could but hope your heart would not be broken. I have told you that my mother died when I was sixteen. On her death-bed she exacted from me a solemn promise never to marry a woman whose mother had not been pure, whose mother's name had not been unstained. Was this a warning? There are those who say prophecy is a gift accorded to the dying. Can I go on? I must, though it is at the risk of darkening forever the picture, you have so loved to contemplate, of your sweet young mother.

"This morning I sought my father in his library, and told him I wished to bring him home a daughter. He asked her name and lineage, and when I told him, he betrayed the strongest agitation. My poor boy,' he said at length,

my poor Reginald-you remember the vow you made to your dying mother? Isa Hutchinson is the child of an Italian singer who was never married. I cannot receive her as my daughter, you cannot forget your oath.'

"For a long time, Isa, I thought I could not was a footstep in the hall approaching the draw-live, but I knew such a thought was sinful, and I ing room, but it was as of one old, and somewhat struggled against it resolutely, and at last I came

.