ting since! But as yet she was a fair young girl with
the dewdrops of fresh feeling in her bosom, and, instead of
"Rose"--which seemed too mature a name for her half-opened beauty--her
lover called her "Rosebud."

The rosebud was destined never to bloom for Edward Fane. His mother
was a rich and haughty dame with all the aristocratic prejudices of
colonial times. She scorned Rose Grafton's humble parentage and caused
her son to break his faith, though, had she let him choose, he would
have prized his Rosebud above the richest diamond. The lovers parted,
and have seldom met again. Both may have visited the same mansions,
but not at the same time, for one was bidden to the festal hall and
the other to the sick-chamber; he was the guest of Pleasure and
Prosperity, and she of Anguish. Rose, after their separation, was long
secluded within the dwelling of Mr. Toothaker, whom she married with
the revengeful hope of breaking her false lover's heart. She went to
her bridegroom's arms with bitterer tears, they say, than young girls
ought to shed at the threshold of the bridal-chamber. Yet, though her
husband's head was getting gray and his heart had been chilled with an
autumnal frost, Rose soon began to love him, and wondered at her own
conjugal affection. He was all she had to love; there were no
children.

In a year or two poor Mr. Toothaker was visited with a wearisome
infirmity which settled in his joints and made him weaker than a
child. He crept forth about his business, and came home at dinner-time
and eventide, not with the manly tread that gladdens a wife's heart,
but slowly, feebly, jotting down each dull footstep with a melancholy
dub of his staff. We must pardon his pretty wife if she sometimes
blushed to own him. Her visitors, when they heard him coming, looked
for the appearance of some old, old man, but he dragged his nerveless
limbs into the parlor--and there was Mr. Toothaker! The disease
increasing, he never went into the sunshine save with a staff in his
right hand and his left on his wife's shoulder, bearing heavily
downward like a dead man's hand. Thus, a slender woman still looking
maiden-like, she supported his tall, broad-chested frame along the
pathway of their little garden, and plucked the roses for her
gray-haired husband, and spoke soothingly as to an infant. His mind
was palsied with his body; its utmost energy was peevishness. In a few
months more she helped him up the staircase with a pause at