h
seems to me as nothing when I look at you. Will you take me so?"

Then Lucina looked straight up in his face, and her blushes were
gone, and her blue eyes were dark, as if from unknown depths of love
and faithfulness. "Don't you know," she said, with an authoritative
seriousness, which seemed beyond her years and her girlish
experience--"don't you know that when I give you all I give to
myself, and that if I did not give you all I could never give to
myself, but should be poor all my life?

"And, and--" continued Lucina, tremulously, for she was beginning to
falter, being nerved to such length of assertive speech only by her
wish to comfort and reassure Jerome, "don't you know--don't you know,
Jerome, that--a woman's giving is all her taking, and--you wouldn't
take the gingerbread, dear, and the money for the shoes, when we were
both children--but, maybe your--taking from--somebody who loves you
is your--best giving--"

With that Lucina was sobbing softly on Jerome's shoulder, and he was
leaning his face close to hers, whispering brokenly and kissing her
hair and her cheek.

"It doesn't matter, after all, because you lost your mill, dear,"
Lucina said, presently, "because we have money enough for everything,
now."

"It is your money, for your own needs always," Jerome returned,
quickly, and with a sudden recoil as from a touch upon a raw surface,
for the sensitiveness of a whole life cannot be hardened in a moment.

"No, it is yours, too; he meant it so," said Lucina, with a little
laugh. "You wait a minute and I will show you."

With that Lucina fumbled in the pocket of her silken gown and
produced a letter.

"Read this, dear," said she, "and you will see what I mean."

"What is it?" asked Jerome, wonderingly, staring at the
superscription, which was, "For Mistress Lucina Merritt, to be opened
and read by herself, at her pleasure and discretion, and to be read
by herself and Jerome Edwards jointly on the day of their betrothal."

"Come over to the light and we will read it together," said Lucina.

Jerome and Lucina sat down on the sofa under the branching
candlestick and read the letter with their heads close together. The
letter ran:

"Dear Mistress Lucina,--When this you read an old soldier will have
fought his last battle, and his heart, which has held you as kindly
as a father's, will have ceased to beat. But he prays that you will
ever, in your own true and loving heart, save a place for his memo