tiny frame that presently
stretched itself out, dead,--all its sweet songs sung, its brief, bright
existence ended forever. "Ah, my little birdie, it is all over,"
whispered Francesca, as she laid it softly down, and unconsciously
lifted her hand to her own head with a self-pitying gesture that was
sorrowful to behold.

"Like me," she did not say; yet a penetrating eye looking at them--the
slight bird lying dead, its brilliant plumage already dimmed, the young
girl gazing at it--would perceive that alike these two were fitted for
the warmth and sunshine, would perceive that both had been thwarted and
defrauded of their fair inheritance, would perceive that one lay spent
and dead in its early spring. What of the other?

"Aunt Alice," said Francesca a few days after that, "can you go to New
York this afternoon or to-morrow morning?"

"Certainly, dear. I purposed returning to-day or early in the morning to
see the Seventh march away. Of course you would like to be there."

"Yes." She spoke slowly, and with seeming indifference. It was because
she could scarcely control her voice to speak at all. "I should like to
be there."

Francesca knew, what her aunt did not, that Surrey was a member of the
Seventh, and that he would march away with it to danger,--perhaps to
death.

So they were there, in a window overlooking the great avenue,--Mrs.
Lancaster, foreigner though she was, thrilled to the heart's core by the
magnificent pageant; Francesca straining her eyes up the long street,
through the vast sea of faces, to fasten them upon just one face that
she knew would presently appear in the throng.

"Ah, heavens!" cried Mrs. Lancaster, "what a sight! look at those young
men; they are the choice and fine of the city. See, see! there is
Hunter, and Winthrop, and Pursuivant, and Mortimer, and Shaw, and
Russell, and, yes--no--it is, over there--your friend, Surrey, himself.
Did you know, Francesca?"

Francesca did not reply. Mrs. Lancaster turned to see her lying white
and cold in her chair. Endurance had failed at last.

CHAPTER VII

"_The plain, unvarnished tale of my whole course of love._"

Shakespeare

"What a handsome girl that is who always waits on us!" Francesca had
once said to Clara Russell, as they came out of Hyacinth's with some
dainty laces in their hands.

"Very," Clara had answered.

The handsome girl was Sallie.

At another time Francesca, admiring some particular specimen of the
pom