and in marriage because of it.

Once she attempted to warn Claire of the hidden rocks that lay in love's
ocean, but the girl turned quickly a white, pained face toward her.

"Say no more, Faynie," she cried; "the mischief, as you call it, has
already been done. My heart has left me and gone to him. If I do not win
him I shall die. You know the words:

"Some hold that love is a foolish thing,
A thing of little worth;
But little or great, or weak or strong.
'Tis love that rules the earth.

"The tale is new, yet ever told;
It has often been breathed ere now---
'There was a lad who loved a lass'--
'Tis old as the world, I trow!

"The song I sing has been sung before,
And will often again be sung
While lads and lasses have lips to kiss,
Or bard a tuneful tongue.

"And this is the burden of my rhyme--
Though love be of little worth,
Yet from pole to pole and shore to shore,
'Tis love that rules the earth."

"And it is love that breaks hearts and wrecks lives," murmured Faynie,
with streaming eyes and quivering lips. "Oh, Claire! again I warn you to
take care--beware!"

For one brief moment she was tempted to tell Claire her own story.

Ah, had she but done so, how much misery might have been spared the
hapless girl! But she put the impulse from her with a shudder.

No, no, she could not breathe to human ears the story of her false lover
and the tragedy that had ended her dream of love.

She had never permitted her thoughts to dwell upon Lester Armstrong
since that fatal night.

If there were times when she thought of him as when she knew him first,
seemingly so loving, tender and true, she put the thought quickly from
her, remembering him as she saw him that fatal night--transformed
suddenly into a demon by strong drink, when he struck her down upon
finding that she had just been disinherited--that she was not the
heiress that he had taken her to be.

He thought his crime buried fathoms deep under the drifting snow heaps.
Ah, how great would be his terror to find that the grave to which he had
consigned her had given her back to the world of the living! No, no, she
could not shock Claire's young ears with that horrible story!

It would be bad enough for her to learn of it in after years.

Thus Faynie settled the matter in her own mind, and her lips were
sealed.

One morning Claire burst eagerly into the room, quite as soon