orton would one day reappear. With his memory she
cherished also that of her earlier and more guilty protector; but they
were separate feelings, which she distinguished in her own way.

"Papa had given her up. She knew that he would not have sent her away,
far--far over the great water, if he had meant to see Fanny again; but
her brother was forced to leave her--he would come to life one day, and
then they should live together!"

One day, towards the end of autumn, as her schoolmistress, a good woman
on the whole, but who had not yet had the wit to discover by what chords
to tune the instrument, over which so wearily she drew her unskilful
hand--one day, we say, the schoolmistress happened to be dressed for
a christening party to which she was invited in the suburb; and,
accordingly, after the morning lessons, the pupils were to be dismissed
to a holiday. As Fanny now came last, with the hopeless spelling-book,
she stopped suddenly short, and her eyes rested with avidity upon a
large bouquet of exotic flowers, with which the good lady had enlivened
the centre of the parted kerchief, whose yellow gauze modestly veiled
that tender section of female beauty which poets have likened to hills
of snow--a chilling simile! It was then autumn; and field, and even
garden flowers were growing rare.

"Will you give me one of those flowers?" said Fanny, dropping her book.

"One of these flowers, child! why?"

Fanny did not answer; but one of the elder and cleverer girls said--

"Oh! she comes from France, you know, ma'am, and the Roman Catholics put
flowers, and ribands, and things, over the graves; you recollect, ma'am,
we were reading yesterday about Pere-la-Chaise?"

"Well! what then?"

"And Miss Fanny will do any kind of work for us if we will give her
flowers."

"My brother told me where to put them;--but these pretty flowers, I
never had any like them; they may bring him back again! I'll be so good
if you'll give me one, only one!"

"Will you learn your lesson if I do, Fanny?"

"Oh! yes! Wait a moment!"

And Fanny stole back to her desk, put the hateful book resolutely before
her, pressed both hands tightly on her temples,--Eureka! the chord was
touched; and Fanny marched in triumph through half a column of hostile
double syllables!

From that day the schoolmistress knew how to stimulate her, and Fanny
learned to read: her path to knowledge thus literally strewn with
flowers! Catherine, thy children were far off