[Illustration] —There she sits, by the corner of the fire, in a neat home dress, of sober, yet most adorning color. A little bit of lace ruffle is gathered about the neck, by a blue ribbon; and the ends of the ribbon are crossed under the dimpling chin, and are fastened neatly by a simple, unpretending brooch—your gift. The arm, a pretty taper arm, lies over the carved elbow of the oaken chair; the hand, white and delicate, sustains a little home volume that hangs from her fingers. The forefinger is between the leaves, and the others lie in relief upon the dark embossed cover. She repeats in a silver voice a line that has attracted her fancy; and you listen—or, at any rate, you seem to listen—with your eyes now on the lips, now on the forehead, and now on the finger, where glitters like a star, the marriage ring—little gold band, at which she does not chafe, that tells you—she is yours! —Weak testimonial, if that were all that told it! The eye, the voice, the look, the heart, tells you stronger and better, that she is yours. And a feeling within, where it lies you know not, and whence it comes you know not, but sweeping over heart and brain, like a fire-flood, tells you, too, that you are hers! Irremediably bound as Massinger’s Hortensio: I am subject to another’s will and can Nor speak, nor do, without permission from her! The fire is warm as ever; what length of heat in this hard burning anthracite! It has scarce sunk yet to the second bar of the grate, though the clock upon the churchtower has tolled eleven. —Aye—mused I, gayly—such a heart does not grow faint, it does not spend itself in idle puffs of blaze, it does not become chilly with the passing years; but it gains and grows in strength and heat until the fire of life is covered over with the ashes of death. Strong or hot as it may be at the first, it loses nothing. It may not, indeed, as time advances, throw out, like the coal fire, when new-lit, jets of blue sparkling flame; it may not continue to bubble and gush like a fountain at its source, but it will become a strong river of flowing charities.