ss and tenderness of friendship
deepened into the warmth and devotion of perfect love. Helen could not
look back to any particular scene, where the character of the friend was
merged into that of the lover. She felt the blessed assurance that she
was beloved, yet had any one asked her how and when she first received
it, she would have found it difficult to answer. He talked to her of the
happiness of the future, of _their_ future, of the heaven of mutual
trust and faith and love, begun on earth, in the kingdom of their
hearts, till it seemed as if her individual existence ceased, and life
with him became a heavenly identity. There were other life interests,
too, twining together, as the following scene will show.

The evening before the wedding-day of Arthur and Helen, as Mrs. Hazleton
was walking in the garden, gathering flowers and evergreens for bridal
garlands to decorate the room, Louis approached her, hand in hand with
her blind child.

"Mrs. Hazleton," said he with trembling eagerness, "will you give me
your daughter, and let us hallow the morrow by a double wedding?"

"What, Alice, my poor blind Alice!" exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton, dropping in
astonishment the flowers she had gathered. "You cannot mean what you
say--and her misfortune should make her sacred from levity."

"I do mean it. I have long and ardently wished it. The consciousness of
my unworthiness has till now sealed my lips, but I cannot keep silence
longer. My affection has grown too strong for the restraints imposed
upon it. Give me your daughter, dearer to me for her blindness, more
precious for her helplessness, and I will guard her as the richest
treasure ever bestowed on man."

Mrs. Hazleton was greatly agitated. She had always looked on Alice as
excluded by her misfortune from the usual destiny of her sex, as
consecrated from her birth for a vestal's lot. She had never thought of
her being wooed as a wife, and she repelled the idea as something
sacrilegious.

"Impossible, Louis," she answered. "You know not what you ask. My Alice
is set apart, by her Maker's will, from the sympathies of love. I have
disciplined her for a life of loneliness. She looks forward to no other.
Disturb not, I pray thee, the holy simplicity of her feelings, by
inspiring hopes which never can be realized."

"Speak, Alice," cried Louis, "and tell your mother all you just now said
to me. Let me be justified in her eyes."

Alice lifted her downcast, blushing face, wh