PROLOGUE.

"There is a reaper whose name is Death,
And with his sickle keen

He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between."

WHAT histories some faces tell! Others are blank always-blank in youth, still more blank in age. You wonder what four-walled life the owners of such faces can have led, that they bear no impress of struggle, none of anxiety, little of interest, still less of intellectual life. The latter is so rare, and is met with so seldom, that one ceases to look for it in women's countenances, generally the most tell

"Mrs.

-'s compliments, and will Square?"

you come directly to

It was an unceremonious message, and on that account probably not less urgent than one of a more civil kind. Nevertheless I hesitated; for though I don't love much eating, I like to have my dinner in peace if possible.

"Find out who is ill," I said, briefly.

The answer was as short: "A child, sir.”

Now, mammas are sometimes exigeantes; and on a winter's evening I am loath to leave my comfortable fireside because Tommy has overeaten himself and has the stomach-ache, or because that angel, Miss Lucy, has fallen down in a fit of passion and disfigured her pretty face. So I went out to the messenger in no good humor.

"What is the matter with the child?" I asked.

"Please, sir, I don't know, but they say she is very ill, and Mrs. do take on awful about her."

thrown open by some one evidently watching for my arrival. I was instantly ushered up-stairs, and after some preliminary talking, my friend Mr. came out of the sick-room and spoke to me.

"It's a bad case, I fear," he said, in an undertone; "but I am so accustomed to these children, I hope I am over-anxious."

Our professional conversation it is unnecessary to repeat.

After my friend had done speaking, we entered the room together. On a low nursing-chair, near a cheerful fire, sat a lady young in years, and of a wondrously delicate countenance, which so riveted my attention for a moment, that I scarcely remembered why I had come, and thought not of my child-patient. The firelight, the only light in the room, flashed upon the golden hair, the stooping, attenuated figure, and the pale Madonna face, as the mother bent over something which lay heavy and motionless in her arms. For an instant she raised her eyes and looked into my face. I too was leaning over the child, and then the eyes fixed themselves with the same painful intensity upon that beautiful face-for beautiful it was. A cherub face, perfect in outline, angelic in expression; illness had altered only to beautify; and when the heavy slumber, in which I found the child, changed to feverish restlessness and muttered talking, the blue eyes, with their dark fringes, wandering always and resting never except upon the mother's face, revealed such

hope was over, and that the little one was already speeding fast to its unknown home. Do we not recognize by instinct the children whom parents must not hope to keep? Is not their early inheritance written unerringly upon their spotless brows, speaking emphatically in the too precocious questionings that beam from their radiant eyes?

Conscious that the case before me was hopeless, I turned with added interest to contemplate the face which had first so impressed me. The longer I looked upon it, the more I felt how useless the effort to console would be when the little life was over. The concentrated never-varying gaze spoke such volumes of love, that, if earthly passion could detain a spirit on the confines of eternity, death must have been robbed of its prey.

That the lady already suffered much, I saw; that she was to suffer more, I realized with a pang to which a doctor should, from long habit, be a stranger. I had not seen her look at me again after that one brief survey; but I had nothing to prepare her for. Without raising her eyes from that idolized countenance she said, in clear and icy tones:

"How long?"

The voice was, like her face, vainly, vainly seeking to disguise her deep emotion by a stony, cold, impressive utterance. How could she? Nature had given her such passionate depths, that she might deceive the unobservant, but few could mistake those thrilling tones.

"The darling of thine heart resign,
Into His hands with ready will;
Else will thy soul with sickness pine,

And anguish will torment thee still."

The face had a history. After the child died I learned it. I will try to record it here as nearly as may be in the words in which it was related to me

by one who, though only a by-stander, watched the principal actors in this little story with an interest which I hope may be shared by my readers.

It was on a lovely autumn evening that I arrived at parsonage in -shire, and my host, who was a widower and childless, and had, as he thought, few attractions for visitors in his own home, proposed that we should saunter down into the village before dinner, and so on to the neighboring squire's.

I readily assented, and we went. As we neared the house, an ugly, square-built, ungainly one, but with the dignity which an old house, even if it be ugly, must to a certain extent possess, we perceived two figures pacing up and down on one of the straight old terraces close to the house, evidently engaged in earnest, and, to judge from the attitude of one of them, most interesting conversation.

We were close upon the couple before we were observed, so engrossed

were they; and of all the lovely sights I ever saw, I never wish to behold one more beautiful than the face which glanced up with mingled consternation and relief into mine at that moment.

Geraldine St. Vincent was, at the time I write of, very little past the age of childhood; so little, that I thought then, as I have often thought since, that he must have been a bold man who asked her in the springtide of that very early youth to consecrate a life to him so rich in every promise of beauty and goodness, but so ignorant of its responsibilities, and so utterly unconscious of the evil which forms a prominent part of most men's, and, alas! of some women's, experience. And yet her beauty then was nothing compared to its promise. Her manners, too, would have displeased many: she was the most painfully shy child I ever saw, and withal so full of enthusiasm, so buoyant in spirits, that not even her exceeding timidity could prevent her expressing herself more fearlessly and naturally than was considered becoming to her years.

But before I speak of her character, I must give some idea of her and her companion, as they met my eyes that still sweet evening. Geraldine, tall and fair, and not particularly slight— for my heroine was then more of the Hebe than the angel order-looked positively diminutive and shadowy beside the gigantic proportions of Colonel Trevelyan; her auburn hair, the sunniest I ever remember, her true blue eyes, and her radiant complexion of sixteen summers sank into nothingness

I have never seen equalled before or since.

nied.

Edmund Trevelyan was then thirtyeight, and had been at twenty-five, every one said, the handsomest man of his day. His gray eyes, shaded by the longest and darkest of black lashes, had in themselves a beauty and a fascination which, if the other features had been less perfect, must still have attracted irresistibly; but—and in this world there must always be a "but" -did I like the expression? No, most emphatically no! Pride and other devil's vices more degrading had left their mark on that haughty face, to those who could read its lines.

Fifteen years ago I could believe it to have been a lovable as well as a beautiful face; one a mother pure and tender might have loved to look upon, one in which she might have taken a true woman's unselfish pride. But if Edmund Trevelyan's mother still lived, and knew one-third of the experiences through which he had passed, her heart must have broken long since and her mother's pride been turned to shame.

Cold aristocrat as he now looked, there had been phases in his history which the laborer on his father's estate would blush to remember-which no English gentleman born and bred as he was should have to look back upon. And this was the man who was to take that pure, trembling child, hardly on girlhood's threshold, to his corrupted heart.

I knew how it would be the moment I saw them together, for Colonel

Colonel Trevelyan was rich and handsome, and, still young, had distinguished himself much in his profession; of his bravery there could not be a doubt. So people shook their heads, and said he had sown his wild oats, and would make an excellent husband-"men of that sort always did." Mothers flattered him, daughters smiled upon him, and fathers called him a good fellow, and invited him to very good dinners. Still he did not marry. But his fate was sealed now, as well as Geraldine's.

The St. Vincents were not rich, and Geraldine was the eldest of a large family of daughters, wholly unprovided for. The estate would pass to a distant relation at Mr. St. Vincent's death; and as he had always lived much above his means, he had nothing but a few hundreds to give these unwelcome daughters. He had longed for a son; for his family was old, and the property had been in it for generations; fate had given him instead nine little girls, whose beauty consoled the mother, but could not soften the disappointment to their father.

It seemed to Mrs. St. Vincent almost too delightful to be true that this beauty should already assert itself-that before Geraldine had made