ed.

Alas! alas! what change is here? He has not moved; no faintest
alteration can be traced in the calm pose of the figure that lies just
as she last saw it, when sleep o'er came her. The eyes are closed;
the tender smile--the last fond smile--still lingers on his lips; yet,
he is dead!

The poor child stands gazing down upon him with parted lips and
clasped hands, and a face almost as ashen as that marble one to which
her eyes grow with a horror unspeakable. He looks so peaceful--so much
as though he merely sleeps--that for one mad moment she tries not to
believe the truth. Yet she knows it is death, unmistakable and
relentless, upon which for the first time she looks.

He is gone, forever! without another kiss, or smile, or farewell word
beyond those last uttered. He had set out upon his journey alone, had
passed into the other happier land, in the cold silence of the night,
even while she slept,--had been torn from her, whilst yet her fond
arms encircled him.

Impelled by some indefinable desire, she lays her fingers softly on
the hand that lies outside the coverlet. The awful chill that meets
her touch seems to reach even to her heart. Throwing her arms above
her head, with a wild passionate cry, she falls forward, and lies
senseless across the lifeless body.

* * * * *

Misery hurts, but it rarely kills; and broken hearts are out of
fashion. All this unhappiness came to Georgie Broughton about a year
ago, and though brain-fever followed upon it, attacking her with
vicious force, and almost handing her over as a victim to the greedy
grave, yet she had survived, and overcome death, and returned from the
land of shadows, weakened, indeed, but with life before her.

Months passed before she could summon up sufficient energy to plan or
think about a possible future. All this time her aunt Elizabeth had
clothed and fed and sheltered her, but unwillingly. Indeed, so
grudgingly had she dealt out her measure of "brotherly love" that the
girl writhed beneath it, and pined, with a passionate longing, for the
day that should see her freed from a dependence that had become
unspeakably bitter to her.

To-day, sitting in her little room,--an apartment high up in Aunt
Elizabeth's house,--she tells herself she will hesitate no longer,
that she is strong now, quite strong, and able to face the world. She
holds up her delicate little hand between her eyes and the window, as
a test of her ret