er
friends, everything to gratify papa and mamma; and if I sometimes
thought Herbert's too feeble a nature to guide hers, or if Uncle John
sometimes talked with or listened to him as if he were measuring his
depth and then went away with an anxious expression of face, who shall
say how much of selfishness influenced us both? for was he not to take
from us the pet and pride of our lives?

They were to be married in a few weeks, on Alice's twentieth birthday,
and then leave for New York, where Herbert was connected in business
with his father.

It was on a gloomy December afternoon that Alice came running up to
our room, where I was reading my Italian lesson, and exclaimed,--

"Quick, Kate! put away those stupid books, and let us go over to Uncle
John's for the night."

"Where is Herbert?"

"Herbert? Nonsense! I have sent him off with orders not to look for me
again till to-morrow, and to-night I mean to pretend that there is no
Herbert in the world. Perhaps this will be my last talk with Uncle
John."

We walked quickly through the streets, shrouded in the dark
winter-afternoon atmosphere heavy with coal-smoke, the houses on each
side dripping with the fog-drops and looking dirty and cheerless with
the black streaks running from the corners of each window, like tears
down the face of some chimney-sweep or coal-boy, till, reaching the
foot of Ludlow Street, we stood ankle-deep in mud, waiting for the
little steamer, which still ploughed its way through the dark,
sullen-looking water thick with the red mud which the late rise had
brought down, and with here and there heavy pieces of ice floating by.

"Uncle John will never expect us to-night, Alice."

"I cannot help it,--I must go; for I shall never be satisfied without
one good talk with him before I leave, and Herbert will never spare me
another evening. Besides, Uncle John will be only too glad to see us
in this suicidal weather, as he will call it." And she sprang upon the
boat, laughing at my woebegone face.

"You are glad to see us here, Uncle John,--glad we came in spite of
the fog, and sleet, and ice, and Kate's long face. How anybody can
have a long face because of the weather, I cannot understand,--or,
indeed, why there should be long faces at all in the world, when
everything is so gloriously full of life."

"How many years is it, Alice,--three, I think,--since you were tired
of living, found life so wearisome?"

"Yes, just about three years since