shivered in the winter way. But this was but the least. Not poor Bell can tell thee all the feelings of poor Bell, or what feelings she felt first. It was all one whirl of old and new bewilderings, mixed and slanted with a driving madness. But it was most the sweet, inquisitive, kindly interested aspect of thy face,--so strangely like thy father's, too--the one only being that I first did love--it was that which most stirred the distracting storm in me; most charged me with the immense longings for some one of my blood to know me, and to own me, though but once, and then away. Oh, my dear brother--Pierre! Pierre!--could'st thou take out my heart, and look at it in thy hand, then thou would'st find it all over written, this way and that, and crossed again, and yet again, with continual lines of longings, that found no end but in suddenly calling thee. Call him! Call him! He will come!--so cried my heart to me; so cried the leaves and stars to me, as I that night went home. But pride rose up--the very pride in my own longings,--and as one arm pulled, the other held. So I stood still, and called thee not. But Fate will be Fate, and it was fated. Once having met thy fixed regardful glance; once having seen the full angelicalness in thee, my whole soul was undone by thee; my whole pride was cut off at the root, and soon showed a blighting in the bud; which spread deep into my whole being, till I knew, that utterly decay and die away I must, unless pride let me go, and I, with the one little trumpet of a pen, blew my heart's shrillest blast, and called dear Pierre to me. My soul was full; and as my beseeching ink went tracing o'er the page, my tears contributed their mite, and made a strange alloy. How blest I felt that my so bitterly tear-mingled ink--that last depth of my anguish--would never be visibly known to thee, but the tears would dry upon the page, and all be fair again, ere the so submerged-freighted letter should meet thine eye. "Ah, there thou wast deceived, poor Isabel," cried Pierre impulsively; "thy tears dried not fair, but dried red, almost like blood; and nothing so much moved my inmost soul as that tragic sight." "How? how? Pierre, my brother? Dried they red? Oh, horrible! enchantment! most undreamed of!" "Nay, the ink--the ink! something chemic in it changed thy real tears to seeming blood;--only that, my sister."