but rather with the gentle grief of a mother over some sickly, wayward child, who has been to her more an occupation and a duty than a comfort or a pleasure.

But to all such mourning, when it does not wrench up the very roots and vitals of our hearts, when it does not alter our nature, nor throw an impenetrable gloom over our whole lives-to all such mourning, when it is sad but not bitter, there comes a natural end. And to Juliet's mourning that end had come; her illness— many days of unconscious delirium, many weeks of utter prostration and weakness too great for thinking-had placed a wide gulf, a blank of vacancy, between herself and the past. A new life is now opening before her, and, with her sense of freedom in the realisation of her widowhood, new hopes and new thoughts are beginning to stir within her.

She had called for her writing materials to be brought out to her on the low table beside her sofa, and is sitting now with a blank sheet of paper before her, her pen idle in her hand, and her eyes fixed with a not unhappy look in them upon the distant blue hills beyond the valley.

'Shall I? dare I?' she is saying over again to herself, whilst a little smile plays about her lips.

Then all on a sudden she pushes aside her writing materials, and rising, with a somewhat weak and trembling step, walks across the lawn into the house through the morning-room window.

And what do you suppose she does there, daughter of Eve as she is?

Why, first she carefully shuts the door, and then she moves away a sofa from before a long mirror that fills up one end of the room, and, with a blush that would not misbecome a maiden of nineteen, she takes off her widow's сар, and surveys her own fair image in the glass.

And fair it is, despite her eight-and-twenty years, and despite the saddened lines which suffering and sorrow have traced upon her face.

Her small, dark head, with its crown of polished plaits, is upheld as proudly as of old; her glorious eyes are as deep and as tender-aye, and as full of fire; the rich curve of her lips, the regular outline of her oval face, and her figure,—which, if it is a shade more matronly, is as perfect in its graceful curves,—and as full of subtle charm, as when she first greeted Hugh Fleming standing out upon the doorstep of her home, and he had thought her the loveliest and fairest among English maidens.

Yes; she could acknowledge to herself without vanity that her beauty had not yet left her, that she was still lovely with a loveli