stealing over her pathway. Turn which
way she would, there was not one ray of sunshine, which even her
buoyant spirits could gather from the surrounding gloom. Her only
sister was slowly, but surely dying, and when Jenny thought of this
she felt that if Rose could only live, she'd try and bear the rest;
try to forget how much she loved William Bender, who that morning had
honorably and manfully asked her of her parents, and been spurned with
contempt,--not by her father, for could he have followed the dictates
of his better judgment, he would willingly have given his daughter to
the care of one who he knew would carefully shield her from the storms
of life. It was not he, but the cold, proud mother, who so haughtily
refused William's request, accusing him of taking underhanded means to
win her daughter's affections.

"I had rather see you dead!" said the stony-hearted woman, when Jenny
knelt at her feet, and pleaded for her to take back the words she had
spoken--"I had rather see you dead, than married to such as _he_. I
mean what I have said, and you will never be his."

Jenny knew William too well to think he would ever sanction an act of
disobedience to her mother, and her heart grew faint, and her eyes dim
with tears, as she thought of conquering the love which had grown with
her growth, and strengthened with her strength. There was another
reason, too, why Jenny should weep as she sat there alone in her room.
From her father she had heard of all that was to happen. The luxuries
to which all her life she had been accustomed, were to be hers no
longer. The pleasant country house in Chicopee, dearer far than her
city home, must be sold, and nowhere in the wide world, was there a
place for them to rest.

It was of all this that Jenny was thinking that dreary afternoon; and
when at last she turned away from the window, her thoughts went back
again to her sister, and she murmured, "If _she_ could only live."

But it could not be;--the fiat had gone forth, and Rose, like the fair
summer flower whose name she bore, must fade and pass away. For
several days after Mrs. Russell's party she tried to keep up, but the
laws of nature had been outraged, and now she lay all day in a
darkened room, moaning with pain, and wondering why the faces of those
around her were so sad and mournful.

"Jenny," said she one day when the physician, as usual, had left the
room without a word of encouragement--"Jenny, what does make you look