un to feel."

"Nonsense, my dear! he would justly consider me a lunatic, were I to
write to him in such a strain. I shall simply tell him that I wish to
make use of the talent that has been given me, and ask him for his
advice how best to proceed. Don't you think something like that would
answer? Come now, Letty," cheerfully and coaxingly, kneeling down
before Mrs. Massereene, "say you are pleased with my plan, and all will
be well."

"What would become of me without you?" says Letitia, irrelevantly,
kissing her; and Molly, taking this for consent, enters into a long and
animated discussion of the subject of her intended _debut_ as a
public singer.

CHAPTER XXX.

"Who ne'er have loved, and loved in vain,
Can neither feel nor pity pain."

--Byron.

True to her promise, the next day Molly wraps herself up warmly and
takes her way toward the wood that adjoins but does not belong to
Brooklyn.

At first, from overmuch inactivity and spiritless brooding, a sort of
languor--a trembling of the limbs--oppresses her; but presently, as the
cold, crisp air creeps into her young blood, she quickens her steps,
and is soon walking with a brisk and healthy motion toward the desired
spot.

Often her eyes fill with unbidden tears, as many a well-remembered
place is passed, and she thinks of a kindly word or a gay jest uttered
here by lips now cold and mute.

There is a sadness in the wood itself that harmonizes with her
thoughts. The bare trees, the fast-decaying leaves beneath her feet,
all speak of death and change. Swinburne's exquisite lines rise
involuntarily to her mind:

"Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded,
Even like as a leaf the year is withered.
All the fruit of the day from all her branches
Gathered, neither is any left to gather.
All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms,
All are taken away; the season wasted
Like an ember among the fallen ashes."

Seating herself upon a little grassy mound, with her head thrown back
against the trunk of a gnarled but kindly beech, she waits her lover's
coming. She is very early, almost by her own calculation half an hour
must elapse before he can join her. Satisfied that she cannot see him
until then, she is rapidly falling into a gentle doze, when footsteps
behind her cause her to start into a sitting posture.

"So soon," she says, and, rising, finds herself face to face
with--Philip Shadwell.

"You see,