he end of the week our kinsman left us for a fortnight's visit to
the metropolis. Intending to give us a call on his return south, he
willingly complied with our desire to leave his little girl with
us. As we were sitting together in my aunt's room after his departure,
the child brought her a small packet which her father had intrusted to
her. "I believe," said the little smiler, "he said it was a story for
you to read. Won't you please to read it to me?" She took it with a
look of surprise and curiosity, and immediately opened it and began to
read. But her color soon began to vary, her hand trembled, and
presently laying down the sheets in her lap, she sat lost in thought.

"It seems a moving story!" I remarked, dryly.

"Kate, this is the strangest affair!--But I can't tell you now; I must
read it first alone."

She left the room, and I heard the key turn in the lock as she entered
another chamber. In about an hour she came out very composedly, and
said nothing more on the subject.

After our little guest was asleep at night, I could restrain myself no
longer. "You are treating me shabbily, aunty," said I. "See if I am
ever a good girl again to please you!"

"You shall know it all, Katy; I only wished to think it over first by
myself. There, take the letter; but make no note or comment till I
mention it again."

* * * * *

The letter of Cousin Harry seemed to me rather matter-of-fact, I must
confess, till near the end, where he spoke of a little nosegay which
he enclosed, and which would speak to her of dear old times.

"But where is the nosegay, aunty?"

With a beautiful flush, as if the sunset of that vanished day were
reddening the sky of memory, she drew a small packet from her bosom,
and in it I found a withered rose-bud tied up with a shrivelled sprig
of mignonette.

I am afraid that my Aunt Linny's answer was a great deal more proper
than I should have wished; and yet, with all its emphatic expressions
of duty towards her father and the impossibility of leaving him, there
must have been something between the lines which I could not read. I
have since discovered that all such epistles have their real meaning
concealed in some kind of more rarefied sympathetic ink, which betrays
itself only under the burning hands of a lover.

"So, then," said Aunt Linny, as she was sealing this letter, "you see,
Katy, that your romance has come to an untimely end."

I turned round her