Her heart was very full as she descended to the breakfast-room. No one was there; but on the table lay a simple nosegay. “From Marion,” was written on a slip of paper. Edith mentally thanked her friend for the love which she knew was expressed in the fragrant gift; but tears sprang into her eyes as she looked on it; for a few lovely roses, the little blue periwinkle, with its shining green leaves and “sweet remembrances,” and a few early primroses and violets, were arranged almost exactly as she had received them from a still more beloved hand the year before. She started as her mother entered the room, and turned hastily to conceal her emotion; but touched by the look of anxious love which she caught fixed on herself, exclaimed, while she suffered the large tears to fall down her face, “Oh, my mother, I will not be proud to _you_--Heaven knows there would be little merit in that! I was thinking”--and her beautiful head lay on her mother’s gentle bosom--“of the happiness which I have thrown away--of one who has forgotten me.” “Ah, my dear child!” said her mother, as she tenderly pressed her hand on the throbbing brow, “in the doubtfulness of our nature we often accuse those of forgetfulness whose hearts may be breaking for our sake.” Edith looked up, a sudden expression of joy beaming over her countenance. As she bent again over the flowers, the sweetest gleam of hope stole over her, and she felt the magic influence of those words. Happy are they who in their own interests, joys, and sorrows, forget not the welfare of others! Edith looked forward with pleasure to the events of the day; for in the morning the school which she had built was to be opened, with an appropriate address from the good rector; and in the evening, young and old, rich and poor, were to be assembled in her splendid home. She had gaily declared to the gentry her wish to receive, as lady of the manor, “all good comers,” that New-Year’s Eve; and to sup in the old hall of her ancestors, after the manner of feudal times, with the peasantry of her estate “below the salt.” They, of course, looked forward to the event with unmixed pleasure and delight. Not so all those of gentler birth; for she had lived but little among them until of late, and was understood still less. Many thought it a capricious whim of the spoiled beauty, and many wondered what strange thing she would do next. “It was not that she cared more than the rest of them that the poor should enjoy themselves, but that she loved to do as no one else did. What a pity her uncle’s fine estate was left in such hands!” So charitably reasoned some of the invited guests; but, happily, there were others who knew Edith better, and welcomed with delight her kind and benevolent plan for a happy new-year’s eve to them all.