e
old before my time--I could not forget that if I would, for my glass
tells me that every morning."

"Your glass tells fibs then," said Walter, interrupting her. "I have
watched you narrowly; when you are by yourself, or with a person you
dislike, you can look so grave and stem as to frighten people. But with
me, when you are cheerful, and especially when you laugh, I often think
there is not a girl I know, so young or so handsome as my own mamma."

She tapped him lightly on the mouth. "This is not the dancing-lesson,
where compliments are practised with the steps. But I know you mean it
kindly, dear; you want to comfort me for the mortifications of the
past. But you need not, my son; I have comforted myself for this lost
luck, and can even thank God that I did lose it. And was it not
strange? A month or two after the thing had been broken off, and he had
turned to a richer woman, Fortune was so mischievous as to send us a
legacy which nobody had ever thought of; my elder sister and myself
were now good matches, and my poor Rose who always had been plain, and
long given up all hopes of a husband, was found to be a very charming
creature, seen by the glitter of this unexpected gilding. Even an
artist was among her suitors, and he considered himself a very
fortunate man when she gave him the preference. I too did not want for
choice, but it gave me no trouble, either of head or heart. Only when
that man I had really loved came back to me, and had the impudence to
talk of an error of the heart, then, indeed, the bitterness rose to my
lips, and the disgust has remained. Especially when I hear people
talking of man's virtues. They have taken good care, since then, to
prevent my opinion changing; my poor sister--"

She stopped, and her eyebrows met with a sinister expression.

"Had she so hard a life of it?" asked Walter, timidly: "after I saw her
she never left her bed, and then our Meister seemed kind enough; she
always looked so sad, I used to pity her, though she never gave me a
good word. After you came, you know, I was even forbidden to go near
her: I often tried to think what made her so unkind. Of course I must
have been a burthen to her at first, when the Meister brought me home,
as a poor orphan boy, and she may have found it hard to have to appear
fond of me, because she had no children of her own. But I did all I
could to make myself of use, and certainly I did the work of any two of
our usual apprentices. Wh