way over her proud heart.

Drawing close to the minister, she laid her hands on his shoulder, and,
looking reverently up into his fine face, said, in her peculiarly sweet,
clear voice--

"The knowledge of your priceless, unmerited love makes me proud beyond
degree; but I would not mock you by the miserable and only return I could
make you--the affection of a devoted sister. That I do not love you as you
wish is my great misfortune; for I appreciate most fully the noble
privilege you have tendered me. I trust that the pain I may give you now
will soon pass away, and that, in time, you will forget one who is utterly
undeserving of the honour you have conferred on her to-day. Oh, Harvey! do
not, I beg of you, let one thought of me ever disquiet your noble, generous
heart."

A shiver crept over her still face, and she dropped her pale forehead. She
felt two tears fall upon her hair, and in silence he bent down and kissed
her softly, tenderly, as one kisses a sleeping babe.

"Oh, Harvey! do not let it grieve you, dear friend!"

He smiled sadly, as if not daring to trust himself in words; then, after a
moment, laying his hands upon her head, in the baptism of a deathless love,
he gently and solemnly blessed her. When his fingers were removed she
raised her eyes, but he had gone; she saw only the retreating form through
the green arches of the grand old avenue.

CHAPTER XXII

"COUSINLY--NO MORE"

Says D'Alembert: "The industry of men is now so far exhausted in canvassing
for places, that none is left for fulfilling the duties of them;" and the
history of our government furnishes a melancholy parallel. The regular
quadrennial storm had swept over the nation; caucuses had been held and
platforms fiercely fought for, to be kicked away, plank by plank, when they
no longer served as scaffolding by which to climb to office. Buchanan was
elected, but destined to exemplify, during his administration, the truth of
Tacitus' words: "He was regarded as greater than a private man whilst he
remained in privacy, and would have been deemed worthy of governing if he
had never governed." The heat of the canvass cooled, people settled down
once more to a condition of lethargic indifference--bought and sold, sowed
and reaped, as usual--little realizing that the temporary lull, the perfect
calm, was treacherous as the glassy green expanse of waters which, it is
said, sometimes covers the location of the all-destroying maelstrom of