le thoughtful attentions you have so
indefatigably shown to Aunt Patty, in the sad complication of
misfortunes that so suddenly overwhelmed her; and I feel the inadequacy
of any attempt to express my thanks. Your letter can only rivet more
indissolubly the links of an affectionate friendship that must always
bind you and me; but the future can hold no renewal of pledges which I
feel assured would conduce neither to your happiness, nor to mine. Let
us embalm the past and bury it tenderly; raising no mound to trip our
friendly feet in years to come. The serenity of our future might be
marred by retrospective gleams of the beautiful ring that once enclosed
two lives; hence, I have ordered the diamonds reset in the form of a
four-leaved clover, which will be sent to dear Kittie as an auspicious
omen.

"With undiminished esteem, and unshaken confidence, and with a prayer
for your happiness, which will always be dear to me, I remain,

"Your sincerely attached friend,

"LEO."

The majority of men, and a large class of women, bury their dead, and
straightway begin assiduously the cultivation of all that promises
oblivion; but Leo's nature was deeper, more intense; and while she made
no audible moan, and shed no tears, she accepted the fact that earthly
existence had lost its coveted crown, and that her aching heart was the
dark grave of a beautiful hope that could know no resurrection. To-day
she asked herself: "What shall I do with my life?"

Upon the warm air, sweet with the breath of lemon flowers, floated the
peculiar, jeering, yet subdued and musical laughter, which told that
Alma had flown straight at some luckless quarry. She held in one hand a
cluster of crimson anemones, and purple stars of periwinkle, and
walking between two English gentlemen, whose yacht, the "Albatross",
lay anchored close to the "Cleopatra" in the harbor below, slowly
approached Leo, saying:

"Don't stone your prophets. Especially one hedged about with the triple
sanctity of Brasenose! 'Consider that thy marbles are but the earth's
callosities, thy gold and silver its faeces; thy silken robe but a
worm's bedding; and thy purple an unclean fish.' That is one
sugar-coated pill that I administer to my humility now and then to keep
it healthy. Hear him again;--'sitting on the marble bench of one of the
exhedrea on the edge of the Appian Way, close to the fragrant borders
of a rose farm': 'So it is, with the philosophers; all alike are in
sear