had never known before hung
over the Allan home. The garden was at its fairest. The halls and the
drawing-rooms, with their rich furnishings and works of art were as
beautiful as ever; but there was not even a bereaved mother, with an
expression on her face like that of Mary at the foot of the cross, to
tread the lonely floors. The luxurious rooms were quite, quite
empty--all save one--an upper chamber, where upon a stately carved and
canopied bed lay all that was mortal of Frances Allan, like a lily
indeed, when pitiless storm has laid it low!

The learned doctors who had attended her had given long Latin names to
her malady. In their books there was mention of no such ailment as
heartbreak, and so happily, the desolate man left to preside in lonely
state, over the goodly roof-tree which her presence had filled and made
sweet and satisfying, was spared a suspicion even, of the real cause of
her untimely end.

His one consuming desire for the present was that all things should be
done just as she would wish, and so--all minor bitternesses drowned in
the one overwhelming bitterness of his loss--he scribbled a few hurried
lines to Edgar Poe acquainting him with the sad news and telling him to
apply for a leave and come "home" at once.

But the mails and travel were slow in those days, and when the young
soldier reached Richmond the last, sad rites were over, and for the
third time in his brief career the grave had closed over a beautiful
woman who had loved him and upon whose personality had been based in
part, that ideal of woman as goddess or angel before which his spirit
throughout his life, with all its vicissitudes, bowed down. As the
lumbering old stage crawled along the road toward Richmond, he lived
over again the years spent in the sunshine of her presence. Her death
was a profound shock to him. How strange that one so fair, so merry, so
bubbling with _life_ should cease to be! Would it always be his fate, he
wondered, to love where untimely death was lying in wait?

Upon the night when he reached "home" and every night till, his furlough
over, he returned to his post of duty at Fortress Monroe, he lay in his
old room with his old household gods--his books in their shelves, his
pictures on the walls, his desk and deep arm-chair, and other objects
made dear by daily use in their accustomed places, and "the lamplight
gloating o'er," around him. He was touched at the sweet, familiar look
of it all and at the th