bequeathed. Paul's curacy was not many miles distant
from the town where Bessie had fixed her resting-place; and it was
generally surmised by the select few who were in the secret of little
Bessie's singular history, that she regarded Annie Mortimer with
especial favour and affection, from the fact, that Annie enjoyed the
privilege of solacing and cheering Paul Worthington's declining years.
Each spoke of her as a dear adopted daughter, and Annie equally
returned the affection of both.

Poor solitaries! what long anxious years they had known, separated by
circumstance, yet knit together in the bonds of enduring love!

I pictured them at festive winter seasons, at their humble solitary
boards; and in summer prime, when song-birds and bright perfumed
flowers call lovers forth into the sunshine rejoicingly. They had not
dared to rejoice during their long engagement; yet Bessie was a
sociable creature, and did not mope or shut herself up, but led a life
of active usefulness, and was a general favourite amongst all classes.
They had never contemplated the possibility of evading Bessie's solemn
promise to her dying father; to their tender consciences, that fatal
promise was as binding and stringent, as if the gulf of marriage or
conventual vows yawned betwixt them. We had been inclined to indulge
some mirth at the expense of the little gray gossip, when she first
presented herself to our notice; but now we regarded her as an object
of interest, surrounded by a halo of romance, fully shared in by her
charming, venerable lover. And this was good Cousin Con's elucidation
of the riddle, which she narrated with many digressions, and with
animated smiles, to conceal tears of sympathy. Paul Worthington and
little Bessie did not like their history to be discussed by the rising
frivolous generation; it was so unworldly, so sacred, and they looked
forward with humble hope so soon to be united for ever in the better
land, that it pained and distressed them to be made a topic of
conversation.

Were we relating fiction, it would be easy to bring this antiquated
pair together, even at the eleventh hour; love and constancy making up
for the absence of one sweet ingredient, evanescent, yet
beautiful--the ingredient we mean of youth. But as this is a romance
of reality, we are fain to divulge facts as they actually occurred,
and as we heard them from authentic sources. Paul and Bessie, divided
in their lives, repose side by side in the ol