UNHEARD-OF LIBERTIES.

"If he come not then the play is marred: it goes not forward,
doth it?"

_Midsummer Night's Dream._

Miss Christie Grant, sitting with Emily at ten o'clock in the morning,
heard a ring at the bell, which she thought she knew. She pricked up her
head to listen, and as it ceased tinkling she bustled out of the room.

The first virtue of a companion in Miss Christie Grant's view, was to
know how to be judiciously absent.

"Mr. Mortimer."

Emily was writing, when she looked up on hearing these words, and saw
John Mortimer advancing. Of course she had been thinking of him,
thinking with much more hope than heretofore, but also with much more
pride.

When he had stood remote, the object of such an impassioned, and to her,
hitherto, such an unknown love, which transformed him and everything
about him, and imparted to him such an almost unbearable charm--a power
to draw her nearer and nearer without knowing it, or wanting her at
all--she had felt that she could die for him, but she had not hoped to
live for him, and spend a happy life at his side.

She did not hope it yet, she only felt that a blissful possibility was
thrown down before her, and she might take it up if she could.

She knew that this strange absorbing love, which, like some splendid
flower, had opened out in her path, was the one supreme blossom of her
life--that life which is all too short for the unfolding of another
such. But the last few hours had taught her something more, it was now
just possible that he might pretend to gather this flower--he had
something to learn then before he could wear it, he must love her, or
she felt that her own love would break her heart.

Emily had not one of those poverty-stricken natures which are never glad
excepting for some special reason drawing them above themselves. She was
naturally joyous and happy, unless under the pressure of an active
sorrow that shaded her sky and quenched her sunshine. She lived in an
elevated region full of love and wonder, taking kindly alike to
reverence and to hope; but she was seldom excited, her feelings were not
shallow enough to be easily troubled with excitement, or made fitful
with agitation.

There was in her nature a suave harmony, a sweet and gracious calm,
which love itself did not so much disturb as enrich and change,--love
which had been born in the sacred loneliness of sorrow,--complicated
with tender longing towards little