Martha would have loved to
be near, for she could not help understanding in that moment of her own
happiness the love that was hidden in another heart. Next day this
happy young princess, the bride, cut a piece of a great cake and put it
into a pretty box that had held one of her wedding presents. With
eager voices calling her, and all her friends about her, and her
mother's face growing more and more wistful at the thought of parting,
she still lingered and ran to take one or two trifles from her
dressing-table, a little mirror and some tiny scissors that Martha
would remember, and one of the pretty handkerchiefs marked with her
maiden name. These she put in the box too; it was half a girlish freak
and fancy, but she could not help trying to share her happiness, and
Martha's life was so plain and dull. She whispered a message, and put
the little package into cousin Harriet's hand for Martha as she said
good-by. She was very fond of cousin Harriet. She smiled with a gleam
of her old fun; Martha's puzzled look and tall awkward figure seemed to
stand suddenly before her eyes, as she promised to come again to
Ashford. Impatient voices called to Helena, her lover was at the door,
and she hurried away, leaving her old home and her girlhood gladly. If
she had only known it, as she kissed cousin Harriet good-by, they were
never going to see each other again until they were old women. The
first step that she took out of her father's house that day, married,
and full of hope and joy, was a step that led her away from the green
elms of Boston Common and away from her own country and those she loved
best, to a brilliant, much-varied foreign life, and to nearly all the
sorrows and nearly all the joys that the heart of one woman could hold
or know.

On Sunday afternoons Martha used to sit by the window in Ashford and
hold the wooden box which a favorite young brother, who afterward died
at sea, had made for her, and she used to take out of it the pretty
little box with a gilded cover that had held the piece of wedding-cake,
and the small scissors, and the blurred bit of a mirror in its silver
case; as for the handkerchief with the narrow lace edge, once in two or
three years she sprinkled it as if it were a flower, and spread it out
in the sun on the old bleaching-green, and sat near by in the shrubbery
to watch lest some bold robin or cherry-bird should seize it and fly
away.

IV.

Miss Harriet Pyne was often congr