He at length aroused himself saying—“I dare not see my mother: but Kate—dearest, loveliest Kate! I promised to call on her at five; and it’s five now; and, by heaven, there she stands at her parlor window beckoning me to hasten; yes! and she holds up that bouquet of flowers. It was but yesterday I gathered them for her—and what has not happened since yesterday!” Here he paused, as if too much overcome by fond recollections to proceed: he then added in a different tone—“these follies come upon us, with both cause and consequences, as suddenly, as fatally as the inevitable casualties of life! A day of promise is changed to a life of mourning by the event of a moment; the act of an instant destroys the happiness and poisons the memory of years! Those flowers were gathered in hope; and before they—frail, perishing mementos—can wither, he who bound them and she who wears them may be lost in despair!” With a heavy heart Harry repaired to his love’s rendezvous, where, full of beauty and tenderness, Kate awaited him. They were to be married in a week; and these interviews of the lovers now possessed an additional witchery from the fact that their communings, as lovers, were so soon to terminate forever. The romance of passion is a bright episode in our youth. The hymenæal sun, while he yet clambers toward the “misty mountain-tops” on the morning of a wedding-day, spreads his promise over the broad firmament in a thousand fantastical images of crimson and gold. We watch the accumulating splendors of the sky and say, exultingly, if the dawn be so gorgeous what will not the day bring forth? But as we gaze, the sun heaves his broad disk above the horizon—the ephemeral imagery of vapor disappears—and the calm, steady sunlight of every day-life succeeds to the beautiful vision. To Kate, this glowing blazonry of heaven was now at its culminating point; but Harry felt, as he almost reluctantly approached her, that a cloud—the more terrible from his uncertainty as to its dimensions and progress—was gathering on that glorious sky. As he approached, his lovely mistress hailed him with an arch reproof for his delay; but when she reached out her hand to welcome him, she saw that his face was flushed and his eye disturbed; and, changing her tone of censure to one of solicitude, she inquired anxiously: “Are you ill, Harry?” The pressure of the hand—the eager look of inquiry—the tremulous tone of affection which accompanied these few words startled Harry from his self-possession; and he replied— “No—no—not at all ill; I—I—” “Harry! dear Harry!” exclaimed Kate with passionate earnestness, “what has happened? Tell me, Harry! tell me _all_!”