learns to sing.' And when Margaret, in her
gentle way, sighed over my lamentable ignorance of all feminine
acquirements and household method:

"'Let her be,' he would reply, with masculine preremptoriness, 'we
must not force nature. When the time comes for her womanly instincts
to develop, not an English matron or even our own clever Margaret will
excel Crystal then.' And still, more strange to say, he rather
stimulated than repressed my vanity; and so I grew up quite conscious
of my own personal attractions; but without the knowledge having undue
weight with me.

"From the first he would have me dressed in the quaint, rich style in
which I came to them first.

"'It suits her peculiar style of beauty,' I heard him once say, when
Margaret remonstrated with him on the extravagance of the idea. I was
curled up on the window-seat, reading, and they did not think I was
listening.

"'Raby is right,' observed Uncle Rolf; 'she will never make a
quiet-looking English girl like our Maggie here--were you to dress her
as a Puritan or a Quaker; ah, she will break hearts enough, I'll
warrant, with those dark, witch eyes of hers; we must be careful of
the child! If Bianca's beauty were like her daughter's, one can not
wonder much at poor Edmund's choice.'

"Something in my uncle's speech aroused my childish petulance. I
closed my book and came forward.

"'I don't want to break any hearts!' I cried, angrily; 'I only want
Raby's--I am going to belong to Raby all my life, I will never leave
him, never!' and I stamped my foot in a little fury.

"They all laughed, Uncle Rolf long and merrily, but Raby colored up as
he smiled.

"'That's right, darling,' he said, in a low voice. 'Now go back to
your book.' And I went at once obediently.

"When I bade him good-night that evening, and stood lingering by his
chair on some pretext or other, he suddenly took hold of me and drew
me toward him.

"'Little Crystal,' he said, 'you think you love Raby indeed; I am sure
you do, and Heaven knows how sweet your childish affection is to me;
but do you know--will you ever know how Raby loves you?' and putting
his hands on my head he bade God bless my innocent face, and let me
go.

"Oh, those delicious days of my childhood. But they are gone--they are
gone! Long rambles on the sea-shore with Margaret, and in the
corn-fields with Raby; now nutting in the copse or gathering brier
roses in the lanes; setting out our strawberry feast under the g