's table; that the room I occupied was but one in a suite
of elegant apartments; yet this did not diminish my sense of obligation.
It lightened it, however, of its oppressive weight.

My room was next to Edith's. The only difference in the furniture was in
the color of the hangings. The curtains and bed drapery of mine were
pink, hers blue. Both opened into an upper piazza, whose lofty pillars
were wreathed with flowering vines, and crowned with Corinthian
capitals. Surely my love for the beautiful ought to have been satisfied;
and so it was,--but it was long, long before my heart opened to receive
its influence. The clods that covered my mother's ashes laid too heavily
upon it.

Mrs. Linwood had a great deal of company from the city, which was but a
short journey from Grandison Place. As they were mostly transient
guests, I saw but little of them. My extreme youth, and deep mourning
dress, were sufficient reasons for withdrawing from the family circle
when strangers enlarged it. Edith was three years older than myself, and
was of course expected to assist her mother in the honors of
hospitality. She loved society, moreover, and entered into its innocent
pleasures with the delight of a young, genial nature. It was difficult
to think of her as a young lady, she was so extremely juvenile in her
appearance; and her lameness, by giving her an air of childish
dependence, added to the illusion caused by her fair, clustering
ringlets and infantine rosiness of complexion. She wanted to bring me
forward;--she coaxed, caressed, and playfully threatened, nor desisted
till her mother said, with grave tenderness--

"The heart cannot be forced, Edith; Gabriella is but a child, and should
be allowed the freedom of a child. The restraints of social life, once
assumed, are not easily thrown aside. Let her do just as she pleases."

And so I did; and it pleased me to wander about the lawn; to sit and
read under the great elm-tree; to make garlands of myrtle and sweet
running vine flowers for Edith's beautiful hair; to walk the piazza,
when moonlight silvered the columns and covered with white glory the
granite walls, while the fountain of poetry down in the depths of my
soul welled and trembled in the heavenly lustre.

It pleased me to sit in the library, or rather to stand and move about
there, for at that time I did not like to sit anywhere but on the grass
or the oaken bench. The old poets were there in rich binding, all the
class