her début, and while she was still learning lessons in the school-room, she should captivate and enslave the heart of the all-popular, much-admired man of fashion, Colonel Trevelyan; and Geraldine was not allowed breathing-time before congratulations were spoken, kisses given and returned, between the future son-in-law and the still young and pretty mother of the fiancée. The poor child was fairly entrapped and bewildered; she could not but be flattered at the attentions of such a man as Colonel Trevelyan; she could not but admire his lofty beauty; she could not but think that the interior corresponded with the exterior perfections; and she knew nothing of men-how should she? She had no brothers; she had hardly seen any one except her father and Mr. Austen; certainly had never spoken half a dozen words to a young man in her life; and, compared to her father and the old clergyman, Colonel Trevelyan was young. He had all the indescribable charm and prestige, too, which mixing much with the world is sure to give. He was besides a very manly man, and that always attracts a gentle girl. I have said before, her decision was not required; it seemed to be taken as a matter of course that she could not say no; and almost before she had realized that Colonel Trevelyan had spoken to her upon a subject she was too childish even to have thought of, it was a settled thing, and she was his betrothed wife.

As

It was just after this exciting scene, when Colonel Trevelyan, only half-satisfied with Geraldine's answer, was still

pleading his impassioned suit, that we intruded. My old friend and host looked surprised, I thought, and rather annoyed at the aspect of affairs; I was for the moment disconcerted; and Colonel Trevelyan's brows darkened ominously. Geraldine's blushes were very beautiful and becoming; but that was no reason why there should be any spectators but himself. Besides, they were of too distressed a kind to suit his morbid vanity: they spoke of more fear and doubt than they betrayed a dawning love. The man of the world. read these signs too truly; but he did not, in consequence, desist from his suit-perhaps it only made him keener, and awoke in his heart some of the long-dead passion of his youth. I cannot tell; I only know he never had failed but once in gaining a woman's love, and he did not mean that a girl of sixteen should teach him that unlearned lesson, and deny him her hand. He had not singled her out from so many for that; he had at first sight admired her beauty and her freshness, but he was not sufficiently in love not to know perfectly well what he was about. He wanted a wife; and now that he was nearing forty was the time to choose one. He would like an heir to his large entailed estates-a son to take a pride in the old name and the old place; but he was afraid to marry. Brave man though he was, he had run the gantlet of too much temptation not to feel that his turn might come, and dishonor blight his home, as he had blighted that of others. Lady Julia Lascelles was beautiful, and he admired her; and he knew a word

or a look from him would make her gladly change her proud name for his; but those dark eyes of hers flashed too much meaning to suit his ideas of a wife. And Miss Howard was twentyfour, and lovely as a dream; still she was not wise or steady enough for Cæsar's wife: Colonel Trevelyan had learned that a man has no greater enemy than a foolish, vain, frivolous wife. Geraldine was what he wanted; she was beautiful, and did not know it; and even he could not fear that that consciousness, when it did come, would sully the purity of a soul so spotless, or that contact with the world would contaminate her. Perhaps that was what made her so lovely to look upon. I have never seen such an embodiment of purity and innocence as Geraldine St. Vincent. Her secluded life might partly account for it, for she had mixed with no companions but her sisters, and they were all younger and more childish than herself. None of the little girls had ever been at school. Mr. St. Vincent held young ladies' select establishments in abhorrence; and he was too proud to like his children to associate with chance companions. He was also too poor to admit of their seeing friends of their own age at home. Thus it came about that they had led a life very different from that which is the experience of most girls in this nineteenth century-a thoroughly country and simple life, when a school-room picnic was an excitement to look forward to, and if papa consented to join them, they were wild with a glee which going to a pantomime would not inspire in some

young ladies' breasts, who at ten years old have used up all the pleasures which should more legitimately begin at twenty. I don't know that this is a bringing up which fits a girl to become a wife at seventeen. I doubt it; but such was the case: and moreover, as I said before, Geraldine St. Vincent's fate seemed already decided when I met her. So, as I had no voice in it, I could only watch her with the strange interest with which some natures inspire us, even at first sight.

CHAPTER II.

"Wife? Saint by her face she should be, with such looks."

THE day following the meeting I have described was Sunday. I walked` with my old friend to church; and as he had to go early, I had time to seat myself in the rectory pew, and watch the comers as they took their places in church before the service began.

The St. Vincents made a considerable commotion as they came in. Mrs. St. Vincent rustled in in all the pride of her new character of mamma-in-law to be. She was still a remarkably pretty woman, and the greater care of her Sunday dress and get-up rather heightened her beauty, as at that age dress always does. Geraldine followed; and then some of her younger sisters and their governess took their places, mademoiselle drawing the little girls rather ostentatiously near her, so as to leave a place for Colonel Trevelyan next to his fiancée. I do not think Geraldine noticed it, for her fair

years old; only I could not go to-day mamma said Colonel Trevelyan might not like me to be away."

Then blushing, and looking as if she hoped he had not heard her, she went on, making things worse, as shy people always do.

"I was so sorry, because we are soon going to London, and there won't be many more Sundays for my school, and I have never missed one when we have been at Oldcourt before."

I was about to condole with her, and to hope she would find similar employment in her new home, when, suddenly darting from my side, she ran after a little girl who was slowly wending her way down the pretty path to the road, crying very quietly.

"Geraldine, will you not walk with me?-you said you preferred walking to driving always, and I for one should not believe you if you told me you were tired."

Whether it was his first use of her Christian name that startled her, or the tone of authority so novel to her ears, which awoke her to a full sense of her position regarding this man, who had been a stranger to her but a month ago, I know not; but the girl gave one desperate bound into the carriage, then coloring violently, returned as rapidly to the ground, and catching hold of Minnie's hand (who had already agreed to walk home with her father and us), she darted off at a pace with which even the colonel, gigantic

"O miss, they say you are going away; and I shall never be good when you're gone, looking at you makes me good, miss; and Mrs. Simpkins said she should speak to mother, and I have never been complained of in church before."

Geraldine, half vexed, half sorry for the child, was gently admonishing her. Her kind "Good-by, Bessie; I will come and see mother and make it all right to-morrow," was interrupted by her mother's rather petulant—

"Really, Geraldine, on Sundays you need not run and hop and skip like a little girl of Minnie's age."

The colonel looked loftily indifferent; but when Geraldine was about to follow her mother into the carriage, he laid a detaining hand on her arm, and said:

That girl, I thought, does not know what love means; she fears and admires him, but she does not love him. Will she ever do so? was the question which naturally forced itself on my mind. If he was a good man, and made a devoted and attentive husband, I could not doubt that, with a nature so good and true as Geraldine's, she would end by loving him; not, perhaps, loving him as it would be in her to do some six years hence, when she had arrived at maturity, but loving him as many women do love their husbands-in a dutiful and admiring way, which, though it has in it nothing of passion, is certainly less exacting and often more lasting.

Geraldine could not love unless she esteemed. She had such a capacity for both, that I trembled to think of

Had her husband-elect been as noble as he looked, I should have had no fear; but alas, for such a nature to come in familiar contact with a depraved one, the recoil would be fierce and violent, the judgment unreflecting and impulsive, and the condemnation unhesitating. None are so uncharitable as the very young; and Geraldine's life had fostered the natural modesty and purity of her disposition to an almost morbid extent. As I said before, she had lived an isolated life, so far as friends of either sex went; for Mrs. St. Vincent, with the vanity of a silly woman who had married young, disliked her tall girls to be seen by strangers, who might make comments on their still pretty mother, any thing but flattering to her years; and her husband, with the pride of an old and now very poor family, had thought no one in the county good enough for his children to associate with. So the girls had remained with their discontented strict governess, in their secluded school-room life; and, but for Colonel Trevelyan's undisguised admiration of Geraldine, when, walking with their mother, he suddenly encountered the school-room party, her life would have gone on its monotony for at least another year.

I cannot but think it would have been well had it been so. Youth is too precious and too sacred to be parted with lightly and suddenly; and, alas! the parting is forever, when it is a violent and premature one.

last a long or a short time; but the youth of the heart is a thing to be cherished—not to be parted with in a moment; for no tears and no sighing ever bring it back to us. I could have wished that Geraldine's had been prolonged beyond the usual period of girlhood; but such was not to be; and He who orders all things with infinite wisdom knows what is best for us, though we often imagine that, had we the disposal of our lives, we should order them very differently, and insure their greater success.

I wonder who, on coming to the end of a long life, would not, were it in their power, remodel all their actions on a totally different plan from the one they have pursued, and with better results, as they think; and no doubt we all make many and grievous mistakes in our lives. Our best intentions are never fulfilled; our noblest aspirations are nipped by the frost of time; but the greatest mistake of all lies in thinking that we could have ordered the result differently. Had we put more trust in God and less in ourselves, we should still review our past lives with regret, though not with remorse; and we should probably have far less reason for the repentance which comes too late.

CHAPTER III.

"She was a phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight."

THE St. Vincents went to London. Several months were to elapse before