Poor young creature, how perfectly wretched she looks as she sits in the bow-window, watching the fairy-like thistle-seed as it goes floating away up in the still air. There is nothing like these clear September nights after sunset, for a reverie. If it is a calm evening, and an intense light fills the sky and glorifies it, and you sit where you can see the new moon, with the magnificent evening star beneath it, you must be a stupid affair indeed, if you cannot then dream the most _heavenly_ dreams! But Rosalie Sherwood is in no dreaming mood this lovely Sabbath night. Her heart is crushed in such an utter hopelessness of grief as leaves no room in it for hopes, her brain is too acutely sensitive just now for visions. The thistle-down in beautiful procession moves gently on and up before her eyes, and as she watches, the frail things assume a new interest to her; she feels a human sympathy with them—like the viewless winds they come, from whence she knows not—and go, whither none can tell. They are homeless and alone, and she is like them, but she is not, as they, purposeless! If you could look into her mind now, you would see how she has nerved it up to a great determination—how, that mastering visions and hopes once cherished, she has gone forward now to a bleak and barren path, and stands there very resolute, yet, in the first moment of the resolve, miserable; no—she has not yet grown strong in the suffering—she cannot _this_ night stand up beneath the burden, to bear it with a smile of triumph. Rosalie Sherwood was an only child: the infant of an humble friend Mrs. Melville had known from her own girlhood. She, poor creature, had neither _lived_ nor _died_ a sinner, “But, as love’s wild prayer dissolved in air, Her woman’s heart gave way!—— And—the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven, By man is cursed alway!” On her death-bed Cecily Sherwood gave her unrecognized, nameless child, to the care of one who promised, in the sincerity of her compassion, to be a mother to the unfortunate infant. And during the eighteen years of that girl’s life, from the hour of her mother’s death, to the day when she was left without hope in the world, Rosalie _had_ found a parent in the rigid but always just and kind, Mary Melville. This widow lady had one son; he was four years old when her husband died, which was the very year that the little Rosalie was brought to Melville House. The boy’s father had been considered a man of large wealth, but when his affairs were settled after his decease, it was found that the debts of the estate being paid, little more than a competency remained for the widow. But the lady was fitted, by a life of self-discipline, even in her luxurious home, to calmly meet this emergency. With the remnant of a great fortune she retired to an humble residence, where in quiet retirement she gave her time to managing the household affairs, and to superintending the home-education of her children.