s kindled a spark
Of splendor that cannot die.

O Love with the heart of Truth!
What is it you lay at my feet?
The bloom of your glorious youth,
Its flower and radiance sweet?

I lift to my lips the flower,
For thanks seem worthless and weak,
And I bless the beautiful hour,
But I have no word to speak.

CELIA THAXTER.

THROUGH WINDING WAYS.

CHAPTER XIII.

I am not enough of a hero even in my own story to dwell upon the events
of the two following years. I graduated with honors, of which I was
secretly and my mother and Mr. Floyd ostentatiously proud. Then my
guardian and I set out upon our travels. Travel was something different
in those times from what it is to-day, but Mr. Floyd had for years been
familiar with the best of European life, and this gave me opportunities
such as few men of my age possessed. We spent our second winter in the
East: then returned to Florence, and were planning a few months more of
adventure when we received the news of Mr. Raymond's death. Mr. Floyd
had but one thought after this, which was that now at last his little
girl was his own again.

He had had an accident in Damascus--a fall which in itself was not
serious, causing mere contusion and sprains, but it had resulted in a
severe illness by the time we reached Alexandria. Harry Dart had been
with us in Egypt and Palestine, but was obliged to leave us, and for a
month or more I had nursed my guardian assiduously, with a fear lest
this was to be the end of a sacred and beloved existence. He too feared
it, and between his intervals of pain would say, "I want to see my
little girl once more: I must see your mother. Oh, why do we separate
ourselves from those we love?" But he rallied, and finally regained his
ordinary health, and before May we were again in Florence in our old
rooms and talking of joining Harry Dart at Venice, when Helen's letter
came.

Mr. Floyd sent for me at once when he had read the news. I found him
lying on a sofa in his great dingy parlor, with its heavily-moulded
ceilings frescoed into dusky richness, its sides hung with heavy crimson
draperies and decaying canvases, out of whose once splendid pigments
color and meaning had faded long ago.

"Think of it, my boy," said he softly: "my father-in-law is dead. Mr.
Raymond died the twenty-second of April."

"Poor little Helen!"