rienced eyes, might have fallen into any snare or pitfall that love might have placed in her way; love, that great blessing of the human race, which, like all good gifts, can be so changed in its contact with the evil in human nature, that it is transformed into a curse instead.

The two children had become lovers, while the little world around them were engrossed with the maturer lovers below. Their names became coupled together before the wise heads of the house were aware of what they were doing. Hugh and Nesta, companions, messengers, helpers, intruders, always together. But they were no longer children; at seventeen, childish feelings are waning, and maturer ones are taking their place. One day, Hugh told Nesta of the great love he bore her, and in her simple way, half child, half maiden, she told him how she returned it. In secret they promised each other one day to be man and wife. Yet it was a secret; even to Nesta it seemed like the promise of a child, to be realised and

fulfilled years hence, and there was a sweet mystery to them both in the knowledge of their secret love and its truth and depth. But a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter. It would be difficult to say how the secret got afloat, but it did; some eavesdropper heard the plighted troth, and whispered; some eye saw the stolen kiss, and revealed it. Nesta was banished to the schoolroom more rigidly than ever, and Hugh was prohibited access to it.

Alas!

the deed was done before the bar was drawn. The poor little heart had been stolen before the theft was discovered, so stolen that to recover it was impossible. So they told-told the whole tale, and reaped the consequences. Hugh was a scapegrace and a runaway; what had he to do with Nesta Gordon? he had filled her mind with fancies, and she must get rid of them.

Nesta listened in silence-she felt that something terrible must happen. The childlove grew into the woman's love in a few

short hours. Alone, upstairs in the schoolroom, surrounded surrounded with associations of happiness, the books they had read together, the music they had played together, she guessed the decree that was to be her doom. She could almost hear her father's voice below in the library, telling Hugh that he was to leave the house. She fancied she could distinguish words of reproach and anger, and then hushed pauses, when she imagined Hugh was speaking in his soft kind voice; and then the door closed, and there were footsteps, but no one came near her. When was Hugh to go, and where?

A servant told her that he had already gone to London to purchase his outfit, and to secure a passage in some American vessel. She hoped against hope, that he might still appear in his accustomed place, but day by day passed, and Hugh's name was never mentioned, nor his absence alluded to.

No one took much note of Nesta, amid the noisy festivities that were going on. The wedding day came nearer and nearer, and

the house was full of visitors in preparation. for the event.

Nesta, in her white dress and moss rose wreath, looked perhaps the prettiest of the bridesmaids who followed in her sister's train. At any rate, two of those assembled thought so. Harry Newton, Frank Stanley's best man, had never seen her before, and she seemed to him like an apparition of beauty which he never forgot. Kneeling, too, among the groups around the altar, there was one uninvited guest, and Nesta met his eye gazing at her with the deepest love and admiration. It was Hugh. He had not joined them till they had reached the church, and as the marriage service went on, Nesta and Hugh heard in every word of it the tryst of their own love.

The vessel sails to-night,' said Hugh to Mr. Gordon, as soon as the ceremony was over, ‘but I would not have missed to-day for anything. I had only just time to run down and bid you all good-bye.'

The toasts were loud and merry round

E

the festive table, and the guests were many, and few noticed that one seat was vacant. Harry Newton noticed it, and as he proposed the bridesmaids' health, his eye wandered in vain in search of one. But Nesta was not there. No one heard the parting words that passed between her and Hugh; no one but he heard the promise that her lips uttered. The promise to be faithful and true to him, and to wait for the day that to her young heart seemed almost near, when Hugh was to return from Californian gold mines, rich in treasures of untold wealth, and able to come and claim the bride he should then have a right to call his own. And Hugh, with his own heart full of grief and heaviness, cheered her with the hope which he scarcely shared, and talked of a future which was to be, and of happiness and union which nothing was to mar. So they parted; and Hugh went off to the vessel lying ready to sail for America, and Nesta went back to her solitary room in the moss rose wreath and wedding dress that seemed such a mockery to her feelings.