ng something of a graver
character, as Annette entered her fifteenth and Eugene his nineteenth
year, when he was suddenly carried off to the army by the
conscription.

It was a heavy blow to his widowed mother, for he was her only pride
and comfort; but it was one of those sudden bereavements which mothers
were perpetually doomed to feel in France, during the time that
continual and bloody wars were incessantly draining her youth. It was
a temporary affliction also to Annette, to lose her lover. With tender
embraces, half childish, half womanish, she parted from him. The tears
streamed from her blue eyes, as she bound a braid of her fair hair
round his wrist; but the smiles still broke through; for she was yet
too young to feel how serious a thing is separation, and how many
chances there are, when parting in this wide world, against our ever
meeting again.

Weeks, months, years flew by. Annette increased in beauty as she
increased in years, and was the reigning belle of the neighbourhood.
Her time passed innocently and happily. Her father was a man of some
consequence in the rural community, and his house was the resort of
the gayest of the village. Annette held a kind of rural court; she was
always surrounded by companions of her own age, among whom she alone
unrivalled. Much of their time was passed in making lace, the
prevalent manufacture of the neighbourhood. As they sat at this
delicate and feminine labour, the merry tale and sprightly song went
round; none laughed with a lighter heart than Annette; and if she
sang, her voice was perfect melody. Their evenings were enlivened by
the dance, or by those pleasant social games so prevalent among the
French; and when she appeared at the village ball on Sunday evenings,
she was the theme of universal admiration.

As she was a rural heiress, she did not want for suitors. Many
advantageous offers were made her, but she refused them all. She
laughed at the pretended pangs of her admirers, and triumphed over
them with the caprice of buoyant youth and conscious beauty. With all
her apparent levity, however, could any one have read the story of her
heart, they might have traced in it some fond remembrance of her early
playmate, not so deeply graven as to be painful, but too deep to be
easily obliterated; and they might have noticed, amidst all her
gayety, the tenderness that marked her manner towards the mother of
Eugene. She would often steal away from her youthful compa