t eyes on Helmar.

Well, at midsummer of the next year Angus married me. We were very
quiet, and I wore the white slip in which he showed me myself in the
glass as a a bride,--for we would not cast aside our crapes so soon, and
Mary wears hers to this day. From morn till night my poor mother used
only to sit and moan, and all her yellow hair was white as driving snow.
I could not leave her, so Angus rented his estates and came and lived
with us. 'Tis different now;--Mrs. Strathsay goes about as of old, and
sees there be no speck on the buttery-shelves, that the sirup of her
lucent plums be clear as the light strained through carbuncles, her
honeycombs unbroken, her bread like manna, and no followers about her
maids. And Mrs. Strathsay has her wish at length;--there's a son in the
house, a son of her own choosing, (for she had ever small regard for
the poor little Graeme,)--none knew how she had wished it, save by the
warmth with which she hailed it,--and she is bringing him up in the
way he should go. She's aye softer than she was, she does not lay her
moulding finger on him too heavily;--if she did, I doubt but we should
have to win away to our home. Dear body! all her sunshine has come out!
He has my father's name, and when sleep's white finger has veiled his
bonnie eyes, and she sits by him, grand and stately still, but humming
low ditties that I never heard her sing before, I verily believe that
she fancies him to be my father's child.

And still in the nights of clear dark we lean from the broad
bower-window and watch the river flowing by, the rafts swimming down
with breath of wood-scents and wild life, the small boats rocking on the
tide, revivifying our childhood with the strength of our richer years,
heart so locked in heart that we have no need of words,--Angus and I.
And often, as we lean so, over the beautiful silence of lapping ripple
and dipping oar there floats a voice rising and falling in slow throbs
of tune;--it is Mary Strathsay singing some old sanctified chant, and
her soul seems to soar with her voice, and both would be lost in heaven
but for the tender human sympathies that draw her back to our side
again. For we have grown to be a glad and peaceful family at length;
'tis only on rare seasons that the old wound rankles. We none of us
speak of Effie, lest it involve the mention of Helmar; we none of us
speak of Helmar, lest, with the word, a shining, desolate, woful phantom
flit like the wraith of