m and
dream, and put into form my dreams; and the face that haunted all my
sacred and poetic conceptions of our dear Queen was the face of little
Alice. But the child grew, and waxed in strength, but waned in
beauty,--at least the beauty I regarded when the white soul looked out
of the beautiful childish face. But Alice grew to be the village beauty,
and she knew it. Every one told her of it; but her chief admirer was the
little milliner, who lived down near the post-office, and whose simple
life was a mixture of very plain, prosaic poverty, and very high and
lofty romance. From this Miss Levis, who was a confirmed novel-reader,
Alice learned that "she had the face and form of an angel"; that "her
eyes had a velvety softness that drew you like an enchanted lake"; that
these same eyes were "starry in their lustrous beauty"; that she had
"the complexion of a creole, or rather the healthy pallor of the
high-born aristocracy of England"; that "her figure was willowy and
swayed like a reed in the wind"; and all the other curious jargon of the
novelette--the deadly enemy of simplicity and innocence. Then Alice grew
proud and vain, and her vanity culminated on the night of our concert in
November, when she drew up for the first time her luxuriant black hair
and tied it in a knot and bound it in a fillet, which was said to be the
_mode a la Grecque_. But she was a very pure, innocent girl withal, and
exceedingly clever in her work at school.

I had missed her recently, but had been occupied with other thoughts
until the time came for the quarterly salaries of the teachers; and I
noticed in the returns from the principal teacher that Alice had been
absent the greater part of the time. This evening, after leaving Father
Letheby, I determined to call, unprepared to witness the little tragedy
that was before me--one of those little side-scenes in the great drama
of existence, which God turns suddenly to the front lest we should ever
mistake the fact that our little world is a stage, and that we have all
the denizens of the veiled eternities for our audience. Mrs. Moylan was
one of those beautiful Irish mothers, who, having passed through the
stress and storm of life, was moving calmly into the great sea of Death
and Eternity. She had one of those Irish faces that were so typical of
our race some years ago, and the intense resignation and patience of
which rivalled the sweet innocence of our little Irish children for the
admiration