reams."

I looked around--and it was sad to see how few there were of all the
familiar faces I had left--and those few--oh, how changed! But there
was one to whom my glance reverted constantly, nor could I account for
the strange fascination which seemed to fix mine eyes upon her. And
yet, as I looked, the spring of memory seemed touched, and suddenly
there appeared before me _two_ faces, which I found it impossible to
separate in my bewildered rememberings--although so very unlike as
they were! The one so bright and joyous, with blue laughter-loving
eyes, in which an unshadowed heart was mirrored--and the other--the
one on which my gaze was now fixed so dreamily--wan and faded,
although it must once have been singularly beautiful, so delicate and
fair were the features, and so pure and spiritual was the white brow
resting beneath those waving masses of golden hair--a temple meet,
methought, for all high and earnest feeling--then, too, there was a
sweet--yet oh! how sorrow-shaded and subdued--expression flitting
around the small mouth, as though a world-torn and troubled spirit,
yet meek and long-suffering, had left its impress there! Her
eyes--those large, deep, earnest eyes--how they haunted me with their
eager restlessness, wandering to and fro with a perturbed, anxious,
asking look, and then upturned with a fixed and pleading gaze, which
moved one's very heart to see. Her dress was very simple, and yet I
could not help thinking it strangely contrasted with the
sorrow-stricken expression of that fair though faded face.

A wreath of orange-blossoms encircled the small cottage-bonnet, and a
long white veil half concealed in its ample folds the fragile form,
which, if it had lost the roundness of early youth, still retained the
most delicate symmetry of outline; upon her breast lay, half hidden, a
withered rose, fit emblem, methought, for her who wore it. Oft-times
her pale thin hands were clasped, and once, when our pastor repeated
in his own low, fervent tone--"Come unto me, all ye heavy-laden, and I
will give you rest"--her lip quivered, and she looked quickly up, with

"A glance of hurried wildness, fraught
With some unfathomable thought."

My sympathies were all out-gushing for her, and when the full tones of
the organ peeled forth their parting strain and we went forth from the
sanctuary, my busy dreamings of the present and the past all were
merged in one honest desire to know the poor girl's history