e days of convalescence were
blissful ones, for now there was no shadow of a cloud resting on the
domestic horizon. Between husband and wife there was perfect love, and
in his newly born happiness, Richard forgot the ailments which had sent
him an invalid to Clifton, while Ethie, surrounded by every luxury which
love could devise or money procure, and made each hour to feel how dear
she was to those from whom she had been so long estranged, grew fresh,
and young, and pretty again; so that when, early in December, Mrs. Dr.
Van Buren came to Davenport to see her niece, she found her more
beautiful far than she had been in her early girlhood, when the boyish
Frank had paid his court to her. Poor little Nettie was dead. Her life
had literally been worried out of her; and during those September days,
when Ethelyn was watched and tended so carefully, she had turned herself
wearily upon her pillow, and just as the clock was striking the hour of
midnight, asked of the attendant:

"Has Frank come yet?"

"Not yet. Do you want anything?"

"No, nothing. Is mother here?"

"She was tired out, and has gone to her room to rest. Shall I call her?"

"No, no matter. Is Ethie in her crib? Please bring her here. Never mind
if you do wake her. 'Tis the last time."

And so the little sleeping child was brought to the dying mother, who
would fain feel that something she had loved was near her in the last
hour of loneliness and anguish she would ever know. Sorrow,
disappointment, and cruel neglect had been her lot ever since she became
a wife, but at the last these had purified and made her better, and led
her to the Saviour's feet, where she laid the little child she held so
closely to her bosom, dropping her tears upon its face and pressing her
farewell kiss upon its lips. Then she put it from her, and bidding the
servant remove the light, which made her eyes ache so, turned again upon
her pillow, and folding her little, white, wasted hands upon her bosom,
said softly the prayer the Saviour taught, and then glided as softly
down the river whose tide is never backward toward the shores of time.

* * * * *

About one Frank came home from the young men's association which he
attended so often, his head fuller of champagne and brandy than it was
of sense, and every good feeling blunted with dissipation. But the
Nettie whose pale face had been to him so constant a reproach was gone
forever, and only the life