Crushing the frail, dead stems in his hand, he threw them back into the box, and took up a bit of dark gray wood, rough on one side--smoothed on the other into a rude tablet. "Philip Benson, Deal Beach, July 27th, 1856. Pensez a moi!" But ten days before he met her at the wharf in New York to take her to her sick father! but three months before she plighted her troth to him, promised to wed him, while in spirit she was still weeping tears of blood over the inconstant! for he did not forget that Philip's engagement to Lucy preceded his own to Sarah by eight or nine weeks. There were other relics in the box; a half-worn glove, retaining the shape of the manly hand it had inclosed--which, he learned afterwards, Philip had left in his chamber at the farm-house when he departed to seek gayer scenes; a white shell, upon whose rosy lining were scratched with the point of a knife the ominous initials, "P. B." and beneath them "S. B. H.," a faded rosebud, and several printed slips, cut from the columns of newspapers. He unfolded but two of these. One was an extract from Tennyson's "Maud"--the invitation to the garden. Breathlessly, by reason of the terrible stricture tightening around his heart, Lewis ran his eyes over the charming whimsical morceau. They rested upon and reviewed the last verse: "She is coming--my own, my sweet! Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat; Were it earth in an earthy bed, "My dust would hear her and beat; Had I laid for a century dead, Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red." He did not discriminate now between printed and written verses. These were love stanzas sent by another man to his wife, received and cherished by her, hidden away with a care that, in itself, bordered on criminality, for was not its object the deception of the injured husband? The most passionate autograph love-letter could hardly have stabbed him more keenly. The other was Mrs. Browning's exquisite "Portrait." And here the reader can have an explanation the tortured man could not obtain. With the acumen for which Cupid's votaries are proverbial, Philip Benson, then at the "summer heat" degree of his flame for the Saratoga belle, had recognized in this poem the most correct and beautiful description of his lady-love. Curiosity to see if the resemblance were apparent to other eyes, and a desire for sympathy tempted him to forward it to Sarah. She must perceive the likeness to her divine sister, and surmise the sentiment that had induced him to send it. A little alteration in the opening stanza was requisite to make it a "perfect fit." Thus it was when the change was made: "I will paint her as I see her: ---- times have the lilies blown Since she looked upon the sun."