True, he had stolen no charm from her little playmates. Carlos was a brighter boy than ever; and as for that merry Zingara-like Isabel, and the yet merrier Manuel--they were not a whit changed, unless for the better, in look, and manner, and love. Still the too-sensitive Luise was hurt at the thought that they could not always be children--that Time was bent on effacing her earliest and dearest impressions, removing from her home that ideal of family relationship to which all her affections clung with passionate entreaty. Whatever the future might; have to reveal of enjoyment and endearment, the past could never be lived over again; the past could never be identified with things present and things to come; and it was to the past that her heart was betrothed--a past that had gone the way of all living, and left her as it were widowed and not to be comforted. "And now I will tell you my dream," said poor foolish Luise; "and you will see why I looked happy in sleeping, and sorry in waking. I thought I was sitting here in the garden--crying over what I have been telling you--and suddenly an angel stood before me, and bade me weep not. Strange as was his form, and sunny in its exceeding brightness, I was not frightened; for his words were very, very gentle, and his look too full of kindness to give me one thrill of alarm. And he said that what I had longed for so much should be granted; that my father and mother should _not_ grow old, nor Carlos cease to be the boy he now is, nor Isabel grow up into a sedate woman, nor Manuel lose the gay childishness for which we all pet him, nor I feel myself forsaking the old familiar past, and launching into dim troublous seas of perpetual change. He promised that we should one and all be freed from the great law of time; and that as we are this day parents and children, so we should continue forever--while vicissitude and decay must still have sway in the great world at large. Can you wonder that I smiled? Or that it pained me when I awoke, and found that the bright angel and the sweet promise were only--a dream?"... There was no lack of conversation that evening in that Lisbon cottage. All loved Luise; and she, in the midst of so many artless tokens of affection and of triumph at her return, forgot all the morbid fancies that had given rise to her dream, and was as light-hearted, and as light-footed, as in days of yore. All gave themselves up to the reality of present gladness; every voice trembled with the music of joy; every eye looked and reflected love. There was no happier homestead that evening in Lisbon, nor in the world.