then.

"You do not know how deeply I loved Ernest Carr. You do not know how I
might have loved your brother George,--yes, the noble, upright George.
He loved me, and treated me most tenderly; he found this home for me.
I did not banish him from it,--he would have stayed all these years in
Calcutta, if it had not been for me,--so he said. You cannot understand
how it was that Ernest Carr, whom I had known before, should have
impressed me more. You do not know, yet, that we cannot command our
love,--that it does not always follow where our admiration leads. I
loved Ernest for his very faults. The fascinations that made the world,
its prizes, its money, its fame, so attractive to him, won me as I saw
them in him. It is terrible to think of my last meeting with him; but
his fate seems to me not so awful as the fate towards which he was
hurrying,--the life which could never have satisfied him."

She left off speaking, and dreamed on, her eyes and thoughts far away.
And I, too, dreamed. I fancied my brother George coming home, and that
he would meet with that ring somehow. I knew it must come back to her.
And it did; and he came with it.

TWO YEARS AFTER.

Oh, I forgot that, long ago!
It was very fine at the time, no doubt,--
Remembering is so hard, you know;--
Well, you will one day find it out.
I love the life of the happy flowers,
But I hate the brown and crumbling leaves;
You cannot with spices embalm the hours,
Nor gather the sunshine into sheaves.

We are older now, and wiser, too.
Only two summers ago, you say,
Two autumns, two winters, two springs, since you----
Will you hold for a moment my bouquet?
Yes,--take that sprig of mignonette;
It will wither with you as it would with me:
Freshness and sweetness a half-hour yet,
Then a toss of the hand, and one is free.

Why will you talk of such silly things?--
What a pretty bride! Do you like her hair?
See Madam there, with her twenty rings.
Ogling the youth with the foreign air!--
The moon was bright and the winds were low,
The lilies bent listening to what we said?
I did not make your lilies grow;
Will they bloom for me now they are dead?

You hate the rooms and the heartless hum,
The thick perfumes and the studied smile?
'Tis the air I love to breathe,--yet come,
I will watch the stars with you awhile;
But you won't talk nonsense, you promise me?
Tear from