her hands, and, after sitting with her a little while, she told me they were going to take a drive up the valley of the Mourg, and pressed me to escort them. You know how good natured I am," he added, laughing, "so I allowed myself to be dragged off: indeed, I was not sorry to be out of the way when you were all packing, for I hate the litter and fuss you women make when you are going even the shortest journey. We had a pleasant drive, upon the whole. I found "the Iceberg" not quite a statue or a fool, and she had ordered a most recherché little dinner on our return, for, of course, we were too late for the table d'hôte. Ah! I assure you, Mademoiselle Marie is not such an icicle as we thought her." "Then may we suppose her a snow-clad volcano," said the baron"cheto fuor, commoto deutro?" "No, I don't think there is anything volcanic about her, nor have I discovered any evidences of hidden fire, but-she is not entirely a stone; the girl seems to have some feeling, for she is terribly afraid of being married only for her money." "So she was confidential!" said the baron. that you are an engaged man ?" "She knows, of course, Agatha coloured, and looked uneasy; Alphonse coloured too, but, going up to her, he drew her arm within his, and whispered: "You are not jealous, my little Agatha, are you?" "Jealous? Oh, Alphonse !" VII. ALPHONSE VISITS ENGLAND. THE Voyage down the Rhine, as everybody knows, is accomplished much more speedily than the upward voyage, therefore our travellers soon reached Brussels, where the Vanderhovens were to stay two or three weeks with Madame de Florennes, before returning to Louvain. It was a dull time of the year in the capital of Belgium, and Alphonse, so open to impressions, seemed to participate in the general ennui. He never took the trouble of concealing his feelings or his fancies, therefore his bad spirits were evident enough to all who were not blind like Agatha. She herself felt acutely the contrast between the tedium of her Brussels home and the charming voyage she had made up the Rhine, and her delightful visit to Baden-Baden. She resided with two old ladies, cousins of her mother. They were very good, kind-hearted women, but exceedingly bornées in their ideas, and leading a most monotonous life. They cared to go nowhere but to church, or to market, and the acme of felicity to them was a quiet game of cards with Monsieur le Curé, when he sometimes condescended to spend an evening with them, and to sup on an excellent omelette and a glass or two of parfait amour, a liqueur which the ancient demoiselles never bestowed upon any one but his reverence. This daily routine, however, was very wearisome to Agatha, and though she went occasionally into society and to public places with Madame de Florennes, who undertook to be her chaperone at the pressing request of her son and her daughter, yet she was often left to solitary meditation, and a visit from Alphonse, or a walk with him, was equally a relief and a pleasure to her, even though he might not be in a very vivacious mood. Hortense saw with pain that something harassed her brother; though, however narrowly she might scan his countenance, and however adroitly she might question him, she could elicit nothing. She thought, too, that he was cooling towards poor Agatha. But Agatha herself did not perceive this: she judged of his love by the intensity of her own; and in her humility, thinking herself unworthy of the preference of one so superior as she considered Alphonse, she was only grateful for any attention he might pay her. How could she doubt him when he proposed that their marriage should take place early in the coming year? And was not this wish, emanating from himself, sufficient to reassure the too sceptical Hortense, and to dispel her half-formed doubts of his constancy to her favourite friend? A very few days before the Baron and Baroness Vanderhoven were to return to Louvain, a young English baronet, whom they had know nat Baden-Baden, arrived at Brussels, on his way to England. He called, as he had promised to do, on Alphonse, and renewed an invitation which he had before given him to pay him a visit in England. He pressed Alphonse, indeed, to accompany him over at once. Hunting and shooting, and races and yachting, and Brighton, were all held forth in alluring array; and Alphonse confessed he was not philosophical enough to forego so many pleasures as were offered to him; he had long wished to go to England; yes, he would accept the baronet's invitation. Madame de Florennes contended that it would be better to put off his visit to England until he were married, and go there for his wedding trip, for this, she said, would save the expense of two journeys; but Alphonse declared that though his English acquaintance was willing to receive him as a bachelor, he might not be inclined to be troubled with a lady and a lady'smaid; and, moreover, that he had promised Agatha to take her to Paris. He took, as usual, his own way, and assuring them all that he would not be absent more than three weeks, and telling Agatha, as he exhorted her to set about getting her wedding paraphernalia ready, that he would order over from London a magnificent wedding-cake, he started in the highest spirits for Ostend and Dover. On his arrival in England he wrote to his mother and to Agatha; and in about ten days Agatha received a second letter from him, wherein he informed her that he would be soon back, and told her that she need not write to him, as he could give her no address, for he would not be stationary anywhere, but was going to visit Portsmouth, the Isle of Wight, Brighton, Cheltenham, Cambridge, Oxford, London, and other places too numerous to mention. "How much he will have to tell me when he returns!" exclaimed Agatha to her sombre cousins, as she finished reading his much-prized letter. 66 'Oh, how I wish he could meet dear Bertha von Altenberg!" Time flies quickly to the hopeful and the happy, and also to the busy. Agatha was all these. She was looking forward to the day when she should become Madame Alphonse de Florennes; often and often she repeated to herself the magic conjunction of names: "Agatha de Florennes," and sometimes she even ventured to trace these words in pencil in her pocket-book; but whenever she thus anticipated her future signature, she felt as guilty as if she had deliberately broken one of the Ten Commandments, and hastened to rub out the evidence of her folly. She had a great deal to do, for, her finances being very slender, she was obliged to make most of her own clothes, and she wished to get on with her trousseau before Alphonse's return, as he would not like to see her sewing so diligently. The three weeks had flown by, and the fourth week of his absence had almost passed, before Agatha became at all anxious about him. Not having heard from him herself, she determined to call on Madame de Florennes to ask if she had had any letter from her son. But she did not find the old lady, who had never liked her, in the most amiable of humours. She reproached Agatha with want of confidence in Alphonse, and with selfishness in wishing to deprive him of the pleasures he must be enjoying, because it was impossible for her to share them. She said that she, at least, was not so unreasonable as to expect her poor son to sit all day scribbling letters to her; no doubt he had numerous engagements, and that when he returned home there would be plenty of time in the long winter evenings for him to tell all his adventures. Thus rebuked, Agatha tried to reconcile herself to his prolonged absence; but, as November wore on, her uneasiness became almost uncontrollable, and at length she wrote to his sister to express her fears about him: she was convinced that he had been either killed during some railway accident or while out hunting, or that he had been drowned by the upsetting of some boat. Hortense wrote back that she was also very anxious about Alphonse, but she did not think he could be dead, or the baronet with whom he went to England would have written to some of the family. That, unfortunately, she had lost that gentleman's address, and she did not know any one in England through whom she could write Alphonse, and she feared to annoy him by making inquiries through the Belgian minister. December came, and no Alphonse! And not a line from him! Agatha now decidedly looked upon him as one numbered with the dead-as no longer an inhabitant of this earth-and she was astonished to see his frivolous mother quite occupied in choosing and arranging her dresses for the winter parties and fêtes. Agatha did not venture to allude to what was breaking her own heart-the dreadful fear that Alphonse was no more-for Madame de Florennes only said, on remarking his long stay in England, that she hoped when he did return he would not forget to bring the real Irish poplin for a dress which he had promised to buy for her. "And he has died, perhaps, among heretics," groaned poor Agatha, "with no kind priest near to give him extreme unction. I will speak to Monsieur le Curé to have masses said for the repose of his soul. It is the last, last thing I can ever do for my dearest Alphonse, and I will pay for these masses if I should starve to make up the money." The very first evening the curé presented himself at her cousins' house, Agatha came down with pale cheeks and tearful eyes to make her pious request, and great was her surprise to hear from the reverend gentleman that Mr. de Florennes was certainly still above ground, as he had only, within the last few days, drawn for a tolerably large sum of money on his banker in Brussels. M. le Curé added, that there could be no doubt about this, for he had heard it from the head clerk of the bank himself, who had read the letter requesting the money to be remitted to England. In her joy at finding the loved and mourned one still alive, she hastened to write Hortense the good news, and to give the authority of the banker's clerk. Hortense wrote back that the same post had also brought her a letter from her mother, mentioning Alphonse's application for money, and her anger at the unjustifiable and inconveniently large sum for which he had drawn. Agatha was quite distressed at the contents of Hortense's letter, and much incensed at Madame de Florennes for grudging her son anything. She was full of sorrow for Alphonse, who, she now felt sure, had been detained in England by debt, or, at least, want of means. She had often heard that everything was frightfully expensive in England, and Alphonse could not be expected to be as careful of his money as if he were a day labourer. How much she wished that she could touch her own little capital, that she might send the half of it, or the whole of it, over to her dear Alphonse; but she had no power over it; she could only draw the interest of it, and the little of that which was left for the current year would be nothing to him. The Agatha's mind was now again restored to cheerfulness; her betrothed was still alive; she had accounted, satisfactorily to herself, for his prolonged stay in a foreign country, and he would now come soon. money he had no doubt reluctantly drawn for would pay all his expenses, and he would speedily return-yes, yes, he would come with→ l'ange de Noël.” Madame de Florennes, meanwhile, was furious at her son for his "heartless extravagances." "What right," she thought, "has he to throw away so much money, when he is going to marry a girl little better than a pauper? It is too bad! He too, who might have chosen among the wealthiest of the land! And if he had not thought fit to sell himself, as he called it, by marrying where there was money, he might, at least, have selected some girl whose family had influence at court, and so obtained a lucrative situation under government. He would have acted much more wisely if he had taken Vanderhoven's rich cousin, even though she had, according to him, the face of a Calmuk and the figure of a Hottentot. I wonder what the face, or the figure either, of a woman signifies to a man after he has been six months married. Her gold would have bought him plenty of pleasures and luxuries. Hortense was very much to blame to have that German friend of hers so much with him in the solitude of the country. She ought to have known that the girl's affected simplicity would make a great impression on a young man so blasé as Alphonse was." Such were the different reveries of the mother and the betrothed wife! 1864. BY NICHOLAS MICHELL. HARK to the midnight bell! Life's sands run out, the Old Year dying lies, Faint beats his heart, he breathes a last farewell; 'Tis o'er-death seals his eyes. The solemn hour of night; The Year is in eternity, and walks With Time's pale ghosts, yet still in fancy's sight And now, with quivering hand, He points to scenes he witnessed-scenes that thrill The heart with countless feelings, memory's land Before us spreading still. A youthful, lovely face Beams on us-Denmark's flower-the good, the fair; She comes! she comes! led on by Love and Grace, While welcomes rend the air. A royal altar shines,' And pomp is blazing like a sunset sky; Behold the statue rise, To him Worth crowns with light, and love endears! Thought on his brow, truth, mildness, in his eyes; We gaze through memory's tears. Hail Rosenau's sweet bowers! A heart is there to love and sorrow given, Why doth the sleeper wake? No thunder sounds, no tempest bends the tree, And many rise in dread, To feel that quick convulsion 'neath the sod, O Year! the reaper, Death, Hath gathered in his harvest far and wide; |