Many a time Annette had consciously assumed a pensive, thoughtful expression, for Achille admired her most in such moods; but there was no necessity for the pretence this day. Those who had any penetrative observation might see beyond the light of her sweet smiles and glances the shadowed eyes that both remember and foresee. She was not a girl at all inclined to reflection, but feeling and intuition go where reason cannot enter, and Annette felt that this very day was the meridian day of her life. Having gained this, the height of her hope and desire, she wondered--even against her will--“if she must henceforward tread the downward slope until the evening shades of life found her?” Was this day to give a future to her past and change girlhood’s simple hopes into the richer joys of wifehood? Or would this new self that had just taken possession of her bring kisses wet with tears, waste remembrance of vanished hours, and forlorn sighs for the days eventual? Not these words, but the sentiment of them, insinuated itself into the bride’s consciousness. It was uncalled, and unwelcome; and Annette, frowning at the intrusion, dismissed it. She had always found “change” meant something better, and that there was ever a living joy, ready to take the place of a dead one, even as-- “The last cowslip in the fields we see On the same day with the first corn poppy.” Fortunately, after any great domestic vicissitude, there is generally a suspension of everything unusual. The family in which it has occurred refuse to be drawn into further changes. They instinctively feel that marriage, as well as death, makes life barren, and they say in many different ways, “It is enough. Leave things as they are; at least, for a little while.” This was certainly the feeling in the Bloommaert family, and it was made more sensible by the unsatisfactory condition of the country. The campaign on the northern frontier had been, all the year, one military disaster, and the president designated the ninth of September as “a day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer, and for an invocation for divine help.” On the eighth of September the British men-of-war captured thirty coasters within twelve miles of New York city, and the citizens who knelt in the pews of Trinity the next day not only felt the need of divine help, but were also wonderfully strengthened and comforted by the appropriate selection designated in the Prayer Book for the ninth day of the month. These were so remarkably suitable and encouraging that several of the newspapers called attention to the circumstance.