he
received his diploma Berintha read, with a slightly blanched cheek,
the notice of his marriage with the Boston beauty. Three years from
that day she read the announcement of Amy's death, and in two years
more she refused the doctor's offer to give her a home by his lonely
fireside, and a place in his widowed heart. All this had the effect of
making Berintha rather cross, but she seldom manifested her spite
toward any one except Lucy, whom she seemed to take peculiar delight
in teasing, and whose treatment of herself was not such as would
warrant much kindness in return.

Lizzie she had always loved, and when Harry Graham went away it was
on Berintha's lap that the young girl sobbed out her grief, wondering,
when with her tears Berintha's were mingled, how one apparently so
cold and passionless could sympathize with her. To no one had Berintha
ever confided the story of her early love. Mr. Dayton was a schoolboy
then, and as but little was said of it at the time, it faded entirely
from memory; and when Lucy called her a "crabbed old maid," she knew
not of the disappointment which had clouded every joy and imbittered a
whole lifetime.

At the first intelligence of Lizzie's illness Berintha came, and
though her prescriptions of every kind of herb tea in the known world
were rather numerous, and her doses of the same were rather large, and
though her stiff cap, sharp nose, and curious little eyes, which saw
everything, were exceedingly annoying to Lucy, she proved herself an
invaluable nurse, warming up old Dr. Benton's heart into a glow of
admiration of her wonderful skill! Hour after hour she sat by Lizzie,
bathing her burning brow, or smoothing her tumbled pillow. Night after
night she kept her tireless watch, treading softly around the
sick-room, and lowering her loud, harsh voice to a whisper, lest she
should disturb the uneasy slumbers of the sick girl, who, under her
skilful nursing, gradually grew better.

"Was there ever such a dear, good cousin," said Lizzie, one day, when
a nervous headache had been coaxed away by what Berintha called her
"mesmeric passes;" and "Was there ever such a horrid bore," said Lucy,
on the same day, when Cousin Berintha "thought she saw a white hair in
Lucy's raven curls!" adding, by way of consolation, "It wouldn't be
anything strange, for I began to grow gray before I was as old as
you."

"And that accounts tor your head being just the color of wool,"
angrily retorted Lucy, l