not
speak. "If it had been any one else but that pretty, vain child,"
thought she. She almost fancied she had spoken her thought aloud, when
Arthur said,--

"You must not be hard on her, Graeme. You do not know her yet. She is
not so wise as you are, perhaps, but she is a gentle, yielding little
thing; and removed from her stepmother's influence and placed under
yours, she will become in time all that you could desire."

She would have given much to be able to respond heartily and cheerfully
to his appeal, but she could not. Her heart refused to dictate hopeful
words, and her tongue could not have uttered them. She sat silent and
grave while her brother was speaking, and when he ceased she hardly knew
whether she were glad or not, to perceive that, absorbed in his own
thoughts, he did not seem to notice her silence or miss her sympathy.

That night Graeme's head pressed a sleepless pillow, and among her many,
many thoughts there were few that were not sad. Her brother was her
ideal of manly excellence and wisdom, and no exercise of charity on her
part could make the bride that he had chosen seem other than weak,
frivolous, vain. She shrank heartsick from the contemplation of the
future, repeating rather in sorrow and wonder, than in anger, "How could
he be so blind, so mad?" To her it was incomprehensible, that with his
eyes open he could have placed his happiness in the keeping of one who
had been brought up with no fear of God before her eyes--one whose
highest wisdom did not go beyond a knowledge of the paltry fashions and
fancies of the world. He might dream, of happiness now, but how sad
would be the wakening.

If there rose in her heart a feeling of anger or jealousy against her
brother's choice, if ever there came a fear, that the love of years
might come to seem of little worth beside the love of a day, it was not
till afterwards. None of these mingled with the bitter sadness and
compassion of that night. Her brother's doubtful future, the mistake he
had made, and the disappointment that must follow, the change that might
be wrought in his character as they went on; all these came and went,
chasing each other through her mind, till the power of thought was well
nigh lost. It was a miserable night to her, but out of the chaos of
doubts and fears and anxieties, she brought one clear intent, one firm
determination. She repeated it to herself as she rose from her sister's
side in the dawn of the d