faithful quite as long as you," she said, when he
expressed his fears of her forgetfulness; and, trying to console
himself with this assurance, he sprang into the carriage in which he
had come, and was driven rapidly away.

He was too late for the night express, but taking the early morning
train he reached New York just as the sun was setting.

"Alone! my brother, alone?" queried Rose, as he entered the private
parlor of the hotel where she was staying with her aunt.

"Yes, alone; just as I expected," he answered somewhat bitterly.

Then very briefly he related to her the particulars of his adventure,
to which she listened eagerly, one moment chiding herself for the
faint, shadowy hope which whispered that possibly Maggie Miller would
never be his wife, and again sympathizing in his disappointment.

"A year will not be very long," she said, "and in the new scenes to
which you are going it will pass rapidly away;" and then, in her
childlike, guileless manner, she drew a glowing picture of the future,
when, her own health restored, they would return to their old home in
Leominster, where, after a few months more, he would bring to them his
bride.

"You are my comforting angel, Rose," he said, folding her lovingly in
his arms and kissing her smooth white cheek. "With such a treasure as
you for a sister, I ought not to repine, even though Maggie Miller
should never be mine."

The words were lightly spoken, and by him soon forgotten, but Rose
remembered them long, dwelling upon them in the wearisome nights, when
in her narrow berth she listened to the swelling sea as it dashed
against the vessel's side. Many a fond remembrance, too, she gave
to Maggie Miller, who, in her woodland home, thought often of the
travelers on the sea, never wishing that she was with them; but
experiencing always a feeling of pleasure in knowing that she was
Maggie Miller yet, and should be until next year's autumn leaves were
falling.

Of Arthur Carrollton she thought frequently, wishing she had not been
so rude that morning in the woods, and feeling vexed because in his
letters to her grandmother he merely said, "Remember me to Margaret."

"I wish he would write something besides that," she thought, "for I
remember him now altogether too much for my own good;" and then she
wondered what he would have said that morning, if she had not been so
cross.

Very little was said to her of him by Madam Conway, who, having
learned that he was