“Ask Grace Leydon!” continued Captain Sabretash; “ask Grace Leydon if I have told you a word more than the simple, unvarnished truth.” “How may I believe the one when thus compelled to doubt the other?” asked the Colonel. “Doubt Grace Leydon!” exclaimed his companion, “why you might as well doubt the existence of the sun in heaven. She is all truth—all purity. Surely you must have seen enough of her vestal-like life to know that if ever there was a true-hearted woman upon earth, it is she. If Rosa Crafts had but half the mental graces and moral virtues of her cousin Grace, she would be an angel.” Colonel Middleton _did_ ask Grace Leydon; but not till long afterwards. His decision of character forbade him to grieve over an unworthy object, and the moment Rosa ceased to be the noble-minded being he had imagined her, he ceased to cherish his affection for her. An interview, characterized on his part by grave earnestness and sad remonstrance, and on hers by flippancy and heartlessness, terminated all intercourse between the beautiful Rosa and her high-minded lover. In less than three weeks after the rupture between them, Baron de Stutenhoff had the satisfaction of leading to the altar the “belle of the season;” but long ere the honey-moon was over, he learned, to his great chagrin, that the anticipated riches of his bride were to be found somewhere in the vicinity of his own large estates in dream-land. A quarrel was the immediate result of the discovery, and while the noble Baron betook him to the life of a “Chevalier d’Industrie,” travelling from city to city, the brilliant Rosa was compelled to return to her mother’s dull country residence in the character of a deserted wife. Colonel Middleton _did_ ask Grace Leydon; after he had learned that she was the _true_ author and owner of the gifted volume which Rosa had falsely claimed, after he had awakened from his dream of beauty to a sense of purity and sincerity, after he had learned the value of a truthful spirit and a loving heart, he asked Grace Leydon to share his future lot in life, and she became his wife—his happy and noble-minded wife—carrying into the home of her husband the talents and the virtues which had been the solace and resources of her hours of loneliness. * * * * * DEATH. BY MRS. C. H. W. ESLING. Death came to a beautiful boy at play, As he sat ’mong the summer flowers, But they seem’d to wither and die away In their very sunniest hours. “I have come,” in a hollow voice, said Death, “To play on the grass with thee;” But the boy look’d frighten’d, and held his breath, In the midst of his childish glee. “Away, away from my flowers,” he said, “For I know, and love thee not”— Death look’d at the boy, and shook his head: Then slowly he left the spot.