reat
elm-tree on the lawn or picking up fir-cones in the Redmond avenue.
Spring flowers and autumn sunsets--bright halcyon days of my youth
made glorious with love.

"For as yet no shadow of the future had fallen upon me, no taint of
that inherited passion had revealed itself; perhaps nothing had
occurred to rouse the dormant temper lulled by the influences of this
happy home. But the time came soon enough. Shalt I ever forget that
day?

"It was during the Easter vacation--I must have been nearly thirteen
then. Raby had been unwell; some low, feverish attack had seized him,
and he was just ill enough to lie on the sofa all day and be petted
and waited upon. I was perfectly happy from morning to night; I
devoted myself to his amusement; reading to him, talking to him, or
even sitting silently beside him while he slept.

"'Our Crystal is getting quite a woman,' he said once, when I turned
his hot pillow and put the cooling drink beside him; and at that brief
word of praise my face flushed with pleasure, and I felt amply
rewarded.

"One day we had visitors, Hugh Redmond and two girls, distant
relations of his, who were staying at the Hall with their mother.

"One of them, Isabel Vyvie, I had seen several times, and had taken a
great dislike to her.

"She was a tall, striking-looking girl, much handsomer than her
sister, Emily, and she must have been two or three years older than
Raby. She always seemed to like his society; so, while the others
talked to Uncle Rolf and Margaret, she sat on my low chair beside
Raby's couch, and talked to him without seeming to notice any one
else.

"Miss Vyvie was very handsome and a flirt, and Raby was only a young
man.

"It would hardly have been natural if he had not seemed gratified by
her interest in him, though I did not know until afterward that he
valued it at its true cost.

"Still she was pleasant and her little airs amused him, and he entered
into a long conversation with some enjoyment, and for once I was
forgotten. I tried to join in once or twice, but Miss Vyvie treated me
as a child, and scarcely deigned to notice me; but Raby did not seem
to resent her indifference or want of courtesy.

"'He only cares for me when others are not by,' I thought, and my
heart began to swell with jealous emotion. But just before she left
something occurred that fanned the envious spark into a flame.

"Her white hand was resting on the little table that stood beside the
couch. Th