In the cypress-shade her myrtle groweth; Much she loves, because she much hath borne; Love-led, through the darksome way she goeth-- On to meet him in the breaking morn. She can bear--” “Here the translation ceases, you see; and then follows the date, with the words in German underneath it--‘How weary I am!’ Now what is strange, Alice, is, that this date is the very month and year in which I was born.” She did not reply to this with anything beyond a mere assent. Her mind was fixed on the poem itself. She began to talk about it, and I was surprised to find how thoroughly she entered into it and understood it. She seemed to have crowded the growth of a lifetime into the last few months. At length I told her how unhappy I had felt for some time, at remaining in Lord Hilton’s house, as matters now were. “Then you must go,” she said, quite quietly. This troubled me. “You do not mind it?” “No. I shall be very glad.” “Will you go with me?” I asked, perplexed. “Of course I will.” I did not know what to say to this, for I had no money, and of course I should have none of my salary. She divined at once the cause of my hesitation. “I have a diamond bracelet in my room,” she said, with a smile, “and a few guineas besides.” “How shall we get away?” “Nothing is easier. My old nurse, whom I mentioned to you before, lives at the lodge gate.” “Oh! I know her very well,” I interrupted. “But she’s not Scotch?” “Indeed she is. But she has been with our family almost all her life. I often go to see her, and sometimes stay all night with her. You can get a carriage ready in the village, and neither of us will be missed before morning.” I looked at her in renewed surprise at the decision of her invention. She covered her face, as she seldom did now, but went on: “We can go to London, where you will easily find something to do. Men always can there. And when I come of age--” “Alice, how old are you?” I interrupted. “Nineteen,” she answered. “By the way,” she resumed, “when I think of it--how odd!--that”--pointing to the date on the paper--“is the very month in which I too was born.” I was too much surprised to interrupt her, and she continued: “I never think of my age without recalling one thing about my birth, which nurse often refers to. She was going up the stair to my mother’s room, when she happened to notice a bright star, not far from the new moon. As she crossed the room with me in her arms, just after I was born, she saw the same star almost on the tip of the opposite horn. My mother died a week after. Who knows how different I might have been if she had lived!” It was long before I spoke. The awful and mysterious thoughts roused in my mind by the revelations of the day held me silent. At length I said, half thinking aloud: “Then you and I, Alice, were born the same hour, and our mothers died together.”