While she was relating, in the same sanguinely pious spirit, the tales that most entrance young girls, and at which their seniors smile in cynicism, or in tender recollection, as their own lives have contradicted or verified her theory of love's teachings and love's omnipotence, Frederic and Mabel, forgetting time and care, separation and sorrow, in the calm delight of reunion, were strolling upon the piazza in the starlight of a perfect June evening. They stopped talking by tacit consent, by and by, to listen to Amy Sutton, a girl of eighteen, the vocalist of the flock, who was testing her voice and proficiency in reading music at sight by trying one after another of a volume of old songs which belonged to her mother. This was the verse that enchained the promenaders' attention: “But still thy name, thy blessed name, My lonely bosom fills; Like an echo that hath lost itself Among the distant hills. That still, with melancholy note, Keeps faintly lingering on, When the joyous sound that woke it first Is gone--forever gone!” “It is seventeen years since we heard it together, dearest!” said Frederic, bending to kiss the tear-laden eyes. “And I can say to you now, what I did not, while poor Rosa lived, own to myself--that, try to hush it though I did, in all that time the lost echo was never still.” Her answer was prompt, and the sweeter for the blent sigh and smile which were her tribute to the Past, and greeting to the Future: “An echo no longer, but a continuous strain of of heart music!” THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of At Last, by Marion Harland