And Grace's laugh sounded more like thirty than fifteen. I was ashamed of myself for being so embarrassed and abashed by a girl so much my junior, but there was something about Grace that I was not used to; a sort of gutta-percha insensibility, a lazy coolness that I had not expected from her drawling, listless way. Nothing of the woman seemed developed in her but the sharpness; and with that she was born, I suppose. She was still a little girl in her tastes and pursuits; loved to play with Esther, whom I afterward found she bullied and teased shamefully; did not aspire to beaux and young-ladyhood, but contented herself with keeping the sharpest imaginable lookout upon the concerns of every one in the house, and having a finger in every possible pie; being at once the pertest and most persevering of medlers. She kept up a desultory talk while I was unbraiding my hair and preparing for bed; asked questions that galled me, told facts that discouraged me, till I was fairly heartsick, and would have been willing to have bought her off at any price; and looked upon the advent of Félicie with a summons from madame for her, as the most blessed release that could have been. I locked the door after her with a bursting heart, and threw myself upon the bed in an agony of crying. What would have been merely a fit of homesickness, and a loneliness soon to be conquered and forgotten with girls of a different temperament, was a longer and more lasting struggle with me. It was wholesome discipline, no doubt; but now, disheartened, I recognized no hope in all the dark horizon; saw nothing in the future that was worth living through the present for; disappointment, pain, and loneliness had taken the color out of every hope, and made what should have been morning, a night, and that of the blackest. "Would it last?" was a question I asked myself even then, the dawning reason of the woman within me combating the passion of the child. "No, no," reason whispered; "'to mortals no Sorrow is immortal;' the storm will spend itself, and calm of some kind will come." But the child's heart refused to be comforted, and passionately rejected reason; there was no truth in friendship, there was no kindness in any one; there was nothing but loneliness, and coldness, and cruelty in all the world. CHAPTER XVIII. "A month ago, and I was happy! No, Not happy--yet encircled by deep joy, Which, though 'twas all around, I could not touch. But it was ever thus with Happiness: It is the gay to-morrow of the mind, That never comes." BARRY CORNWALL.