hite roses, and in the autumn white
chrysanthemums. Uncle Tom thought of it when I was a little child, and we
have done it together ever since. We think she knows."

She stopped, and, still kneeling, looked at him as if suddenly
remembering something.

"You have not heard," she said; "she died when I was born, and we do not
even know her name."

"Not her name!" Rupert said; but the truth was that he had heard more of
the story than she had.

"My father was so stunned with grief, that Uncle Tom said he seemed to
think of nothing but that he could not bear to stay. He went away the
very night they laid her here. I suppose," she said slowly, and looking
at the mass of white narcissus instead of at him, "I suppose when people
love each other, and one dies, the other cannot--cannot----"

Rupert saw that she was unconsciously trying to explain something to
herself, and he interposed between her and her thoughts with a hurried
effort.

"Yes, yes," he said; "it must be so. When they love each other and one is
taken, how _can_ the other bear it?"

Then she lifted her eyes from the flowers to his again, and they looked
very large and bright.

"You see," she said, in an unsteady little voice, "I had only been alive
a few hours when he went away."

Suddenly the brightness in her eyes welled up and fell in two large
crystal drops, though a smile quivered on her lips.

"Don't tell Uncle Tom," she said; "I never let him know that it--it hurts
my feelings when I think I had only been alive such a few hours--and
there was nobody to care. I must have been so little. If--if there had
been no Uncle Tom----"

He knelt down by her side and took her hand in his.

"But there was," he said; "there was!"

"Yes," she answered, her sweet face trembling with emotion; "and, oh! I
love him so! I love him so!"

She put her free hand on the earth among the white flowers on the mound.

"And I love her, too," she said; "somehow I know she would not have
forgotten me."

"No, no, she would not!" Rupert cried; and they knelt together, hand in
hand, looking into each other's eyes as tenderly as children.

"I have been lonelier than you," he said; "I have had nobody."

"Your mother died, too, when you were very young?"

"Yes, Sheba," hesitating a moment. "I will tell you something."

"Yes?"

"Uncle Tom loved her. He left his home partly because he could not stay
and see her marry a man who--did not deserve her."

"Did she marry so