"And I, in my turn, ask you the same question, or else why have you absented yourself so long?" "I was not offended--ah, no!" said Saville, dropping the tone of forced gayety in which he had at first spoken, "but can you not understand why I have thus exiled myself? Did you not know it was that I feared you might despise me--you from whom more than from any one else I desired esteem, admiration--_love_." The last word was spoken in a lower tone, and he looked at her appealingly, as if to ask forgiveness for having uttered it. For one instant he met the gaze of Emma's dark blue eyes, and he must have read something there he did not expect to find, for the expression of his own changed into one so hopeful and earnest that Emma's sunk beneath its light. And when he drew Emma into a seat beside him, and in a few rapid words told her what in fact she knew before, how long and how well he had loved her. I don't know what she said, for, reader, I came away then. But I do know that one morning, six months after, some carriages went from Mr. Leslie's mansion to the church, and came back filled with a party looking most auspiciously happy, and that some hours after, as Edward was conducting his Cousin Emma to a traveling carriage, which stood at the door, he said, "So you and Saville have changed positions, and _you_ are henceforth to obey. What a tyrant I would be, were I in his place. Pray does this morning's act cancel former obligations?" "The contract is unbroken," said Saville, answering for his bride, and producing a locket containing _the_ ringlet--"here is the token that renders the vow perpetual." A REQUIEM IN THE NORTH. BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR. Speed swifter, Night!--wild Northern Night, Whose feet the Artic islands know, When stiffening breakers, sharp and white, Gird the complaining shores of snow! Send all thy winds to sweep the wold And howl in mountain-passes far, And hang thy banners, red and cold, Against the shield of every star! For what have I to do with morn, Or Summer's glory in the vales-- With the blithe ring of forest-horn, Or beckoning gleam of snowy sails? Art _thou_ not gone, in whose blue eye The fleeting Summer dawned to me?-- Gone, like the echo of a sigh Beside the loud, resounding sea! Oh, brief that time of song and flowers, Which blessed, through thee, the Northern Land! I pine amid its leafless bowers, And on the black and lonely strand. The forest wails the starry bloom, Which yet shall pave its shadowy floor, But down my spirits aisles of gloom Thy love shall blossom nevermore!