re is Charles, just rushing in, with a face the
principal features in which are redness and hair, to tell us that there
is another otter in the mill stream in the meadow; there is my little
sister, holding grave talk with dear Dollie, and best (or worst) of all,
there is cousin Lucy--cousin Lucy, with her brown hair, and soft, loving
eyes and quiet ways. Where are they all now? Charley went to London, was
first the favorite of the clubs, next a heartless rake, and finally,
being worn out, and, like Solomon, convinced that all was vanity, went
into the Church to become that most contemptible of all creatures, a
fashionable preacher; my father and mother are laid side by side in the
aisle of the old church on the hill, where their virtues are sculptured
in marble, for the information of anxiously curious mankind; sister Mary
no longer talks to dolls, though a flock of little girls, who call her
mother, do. Bill, poor Bill, lies far away in the Crimea, with the
bullet of a gray-coated Russian in his heart. And Lucy--but it is to her
I owe what I am, and what I am about to do.

I loved her--love her still. Will she _know_ what these words mean, when
she finds them here? I cannot tell. They are enough for me. Not for you
are they written, ball-room lounger, whispering of endless devotion
between every qaudrille; not to you, proud beauty, taking and absorbing
declarations as you would an ice; not for you, chattering monkey of the
Champs Elysees, raving of your _grande passion_ for Eloise, so
_charmante_, so _spirituelle_; nor for you, Eloise aforesaid, with your
devilish devices, stringing hearts in your girdle as Indians do scalps;
not for you, dancing Spaniard, with your eternal castagnets, whispering
just one word to your dark-eyed senorita, as you hand her another
perfumed cigarette; not for you, lounging Italian, hissing intrigues
under the shadow of an Athenian portico, or stealing after your veiled
incognita, as her shadow flits over the place where the blood of Caesar
dyed the floor of the Capitol, or where the knife of Virginius flashed
in the summer sun--not for one of you, for I have seen and despise you
all. To you all love is a sealed book, which you shall never open--a
tree of knowledge that will never turn into a curse for you--a beautiful
serpent that, as you gaze upon its changing hues, will never sting you
to the death.

I never told her. I would wait for hours to see her pass, if she went
out alone--but I