Church, and said she was confirmed at
twelve years old.

But once, in speaking of Mr. Lewis's going to church, she told me,
"William has no religion at all." Much in the same way she would have
said he had not had luncheon. A strange responsibility, if he felt it,
had this William, a man nearly forty years old, for this young creature
not yet twenty-three, and with powers so undeveloped and a character so
unbalanced!

In the ten days we passed together I often wished I could have known her
early, or that I now had a right to say to her what I would. However,
perhaps I overestimated the influence of outward circumstances.

We parted rather suddenly, and in the next three years they were mostly
in Cuba, while my husband was called to leave Weston for a larger field
of usefulness.

We had lived more than a year in Boston, and it was in the autumn of
1833 that I sat alone by a sea-coal fire, thinking, and making out faces
in the coal. I was too absorbed to hear the bell ring, or the door open,
till I felt a little rustle, and a soft, sudden kiss on my lips. I was
no way surprised, for Lulu's was the foremost face in the coals. Mr.
Lewis was close behind her, with my husband. As soon as the astral was
lighted, we gazed wistfully for a few moments at each other. Each looked
for possible alteration.

"You have been ill!"

"And you have had something besides Time."

We had had grief and bereavement. Mr. Lewis had been very ill, and very
near death, with the fever of the country. It had left traces on his
worn face, and thinned his already thin enough figure.

But a greater change had come over Mrs. Lewis. Personally, she was
fuller and handsomer than ever. She had the same grace in every motion,
the same lulling music in her sweet voice. But a soul seemed to be born
into that fine body. The brown eyes were deeper, and the voice had
thrills of feeling and sentiment. For all that, she had the same
incompleteness that she had when I last saw her, and an inharmoniousness
that was felt by the hearer whenever she spoke. It was very odd, this
impression I constantly had of her; but they were to remain in Boston
through the winter, and I supposed time would develop the mystery to me.

X.

One evening, soon after Lulu's return, for she soon took up her old
habits of intimacy, she sat listlessly by the fire, holding her two
hands in her lap, as usual, and not even dawdling at netting. Perhaps
the still evening and the quie