Thus was the die cast. Alas! for the young girl, who, that same spring morning, stole away to her accustomed haunt, the old grape-vine, whose swelling buds were not an unfit symbol of the bright hopes now springing in her glad heart. As she sits there alone, with the running brook at her feet, she thinks of him who has grown so strongly into her love; and though, in words, he has never said so, by ten thousand little acts he has told her that her affection was returned, and for his sake she wishes she was older. He has wished so too, in her presence, many a time; but as that cannot be, she resolves to spend the season of her childhood in making herself what she knows he would wish her to be, were she to share his lot in life; and then, when the lapse of years shall have ripened her into womanhood, she thinks how she can, without shame, put her hand in his, and go forth into the world satisfied, though it brought her naught but care, if he were only with her. Alas, for thee, Rosa! A few miles to the southward, and the same sun which now shines softly down on you, looks in through a richly curtained window, and its golden rays fall on the queenly form of your rival; who, with a look of exultation on her finely cast features, listens to the words she has long waited to hear, and which have now been spoken; while he, of whom you dream, bends gently over her, _his own—his betrothed_! And still, in the very moment of his triumph, there comes up before him a pale, childish face, which, with its dreamy eyes of blue, looks reproachfully upon him. But pride and ambition weave together a veil with which hides the image from his view, bidding him forget that any other save the peerless Dell, e’er stirred the fountain of his love. * * * * * Would it be well for us always to know what is passing in the minds of our friends, whether present or absent? I think not; and still, could Rosa Lee have known what had transpired, methinks she would not have darted away so quickly as she did, when told that Dr. Clayton was coming through the gate one afternoon, about six weeks after his engagement with Dell. _Why_ she ran, she could not tell, except it were, as her brother Charlie said, that “gals always run off and _spit on their hair_, when they saw their beaux coming.”