“India, with her glorious physique, is still a delicate daughter of the sun; she is like a gorgeous, brilliant exotic, that can bloom only in a luxurious conservatory; while I, with my wan face and fragile form, am yet a child of the wind—a wood-anemone, that only withered in a Southern hothouse—that will flourish and thrive in the wilderness.” “Heaven grant it may be as you say, dear Rosalie! It is impossible for me to give you up, to leave you; yet when I think of all you may have to suffer in being my companion, my heart is filled with anxiety and trouble. What did you say, dearest? Your sweetest words hide under low tones, just as the sweetest violets lurk under thick shade. What were you murmuring?” “Only that I should not suffer half as much in meeting anything _with you_, as I should—as I should”— “Well, dearest?” “_In being left behind_,” said Rosalie, dropping her head upon his shoulder, as he caught her to his heart, and exclaimed, in a sudden burst of emotion— “You shall _not_ be left behind, my darling! my darling! By all my hopes of earth and heaven, I will never, never part from you!” For a moment her head had rested on his breast in peace, and then she began to grow restless and twisted herself out of his embrace. “Where now?” he asked, rather impatiently. She looked at him with a comic expression of countenance, and said: “It is a mortifying necessity to confess, but the truth is, the _ham_ has to be taken out of soak and put on to boil for dinner, and I have got to see it done; also there are gooseberry tarts and lemon custard to be prepared for the dessert, and I have got to go and do it. I wonder if uncle and cousin St. Gerald, who both love their palates, (low be it spoken,) will ever get anything fit to eat when the gorgeous Mrs. India takes my place!” and so, laughing and escaping, she ran off. CHAPTER XVII. PROGNOSTICS. “With caution judge of probability; Things thought unlikely, e’en impossible, Experience often shows us to be true.”—_Shakspeare._ The world-honoured and time-honoured bard whose lines are quoted above habitually looked beneath the mere plausible surface of possibility, and from the deep insight thereby gained, often put forth oracles at opposition to the usual routine of thought and expectation, yet which the eternal experiences of life continue to endorse as truths. Were I writing a merely fictitious narrative, it would be in order now (after the custom-sanctioned manner of story-tellers) to describe the cruel opposition the lovers met from tyrannical parents, guardians, &c. But I am writing a true story—in this particular at least, “stranger than fiction”—and so have no such events to relate.