they looked upon her, "How handsome Meeta Werner grows, she who used to be so plain!" After a time these superficial observers thought they had found the cause of this change in Meeta's change of costume, for a new sense of beauty had been awakened in her, under whose guidance her dark hair was brought in soft silken braids upon her cheeks, wound gracefully around her well-shaped head, and sometimes ornamented with a ribbon or a cluster of wild flowers: while her dresses where remodelled so as to resemble less the fashion which her mother and her sister emigrants had imported thirteen years before from Germany, and to give a more natural air to her really fine figure. "How wonderfully Meeta has improved," said Mr. Schwartz, one evening to his wife, as he looked after the retreating form of her friend. "Yes, and I am truly rejoiced that she has so improved before her lover returns to claim her." "I wish he could have taken away with him such an impression as our handsome and intelligent Meeta would now make. He would have been much more likely to remain constant to her. There must be a painful contrast between the cultivated and graceful women he has known in Germany, and his memory of his early love." "Love is a great embellisher," said Mrs. Schwartz, with a gay smile, and the conversation passed to more general topics. The fifth year of Ernest's absence was gone, and still he came not; but he was coming soon, at least so his father said, though he did not show Meeta the letters on which he founded his assertion. It was the first time he had withheld them; a circumstance the more remarkable, because of late he seemed to regard Meeta with greater affection and confidence than he had ever done before. He now sought her society, and seemed pleased and even proud of the connection to which he had at first consented with some reluctance. It was very soon after the reception of the letter from Ernest to which we have alluded, that Franz Rainer's health began to fail, and that so rapidly, that Meeta feared Ernest could not arrive in time to see him. She was to the old man an angel of consolation, and he clung to her as to his last hope. In pity to his lonely condition, her own parents were willing to spare her for a time, and Meeta, that she might take care of him by night as well as by day, had removed to his house a week before Ernest's arrival. He came not wholly unwarned of the sorrow that awaited him, for he had found a letter from Meeta at the house of the merchant in Philadelphia through whom he had corresponded with his father, tenderly yet plainly revealing her fears, and urging him to hurry homeward without delay. He travelled with little rest or refreshment for two days and nights, and arrived late on the third day at his father's house. It was a still summer evening, and while the old man slept, Meeta sat near him in the only parlor the house afforded, reading by a shaded night lamp. She heard