"And why should not letters change?" she asked, abruptly; and I saw her eyes look out dreamily, as if at something I did not see. "The letter clothes the spirit; and the spirit gives life to the form. A face grows lovely or unlovely with the spirit that lies behind it. I cannot say if there be a spirit in such things. Yet what we have worn we give a value to. It has an expression in our eyes. Do we give it all that expression, or has it some life of its own?" She interrupted herself, and went on:-- "I had known that Ernest was not true to me. I had known it by the words he wrote to me. They did not have the ring of pure silver; there was a clang to them. When Fanny read aloud the loss of that ring, it spoke to a suspicion that was lying in the depth of my heart, and roused it into life. My little Jeanie, I was very sad then. "You do not know how deeply I loved Ernest Carr. You do not know how I might have loved your brother George,--yes, the noble, upright George. He loved me, and treated me most tenderly; he found this home for me. I did not banish him from it,--he would have stayed all these years in Calcutta, if it had not been for me,--so he said. You cannot understand how it was that Ernest Carr, whom I had known before, should have impressed me more. You do not know, yet, that we cannot command our love,--that it does not always follow where our admiration leads. I loved Ernest for his very faults. The fascinations that made the world, its prizes, its money, its fame, so attractive to him, won me as I saw them in him. It is terrible to think of my last meeting with him; but his fate seems to me not so awful as the fate towards which he was hurrying,--the life which could never have satisfied him." She left off speaking, and dreamed on, her eyes and thoughts far away. And I, too, dreamed. I fancied my brother George coming home, and that he would meet with that ring somehow. I knew it must come back to her. And it did; and he came with it. TWO YEARS AFTER. Oh, I forgot that, long ago! It was very fine at the time, no doubt,-- Remembering is so hard, you know;-- Well, you will one day find it out. I love the life of the happy flowers, But I hate the brown and crumbling leaves; You cannot with spices embalm the hours, Nor gather the sunshine into sheaves. We are older now, and wiser, too. Only two summers ago, you say, Two autumns, two winters, two springs, since you---- Will you hold for a moment my bouquet? Yes,--take that sprig of mignonette; It will wither with you as it would with me: Freshness and sweetness a half-hour yet, Then a toss of the hand, and one is free.