Italian friends, any one you prefer to me?"

"No, indeed, no!" murmured Helen. "How could I?--who is like you?" Then,
with a sudden effort--for her innate truthfulness took alarm, and her very
affection for Harley, child-like and reverent, made her tremble, lest she
should deceive him--she drew a little aside, and spoke thus:

"Oh, my dear guardian, noblest of all human beings, at least in my eyes,
forgive, forgive me if I seem ungrateful, hesitating; but I can not, can
not think of myself as worthy of you. I never so lifted my eyes. Your
rank, your position--"

"Why should they be eternally my curse? Forget them, and go on."

"It is not only they," said Helen, almost sobbing, "though they are much;
but I your type, your ideal!--I!--impossible! Oh, how can I ever be any
thing even of use, of aid, of comfort, to one like you!"

"You can, Helen--you can," cried Harley, charmed by such ingenuous modesty.
"May I not keep this hand?"

And Helen left her hand in Harley's, and turned away her face, fairly
weeping. A stately step passed under the wintry trees.

"My mother," said Harley L'Estrange, looking up, "I present to you my
future wife."

(To Be Continued.)

THE ORPHAN'S DREAM OF CHRISTMAS.

It was Christmas Eve--and lonely,
By a garret window high,
Where the city chimneys barely
Spared a hand's-breadth of the sky,
Sat a child, in age--but weeping,
With a face so small and thin,
That it seem'd too scant a record
To have eight years traced therein.

Oh, grief looks most distorted
When his hideous shadow lies
On the clear and sunny life-stream
That doth fill a child's blue eyes,
But _her_ eye was dull and sunken,
And the whiten'd cheek was gaunt,
And the blue veins on the forehead
Were the penciling of Want.

And she wept for years like jewels,
Till the last year's bitter gall,
Like the acid of the story,
In itself had melted all;
But the Christmas time returned,
As an old friend, for whose eye
She would take down all the pictures
Sketch'd by faithful Memory,--

Of those brilliant Christmas seasons,
When the joyous laugh went around;
When sweet words of love and kindness
Were no unfamiliar sound
When, lit by the log's red lustre,
She her mother's face could see,
And she rock'd the cradle, sitting
On her own twin brother's knee:

Of her father's pleasant stories;
Of the riddles and the rhymes,
All the kisses and the presents
That had mark'd those