"The most persistent little woman you ever saw," she said. "I fairly thought she'd have coaxed me into that low sewing-circle, or sent me away with a bundle of poor children's rags to mend. I won't undertake to advise her again in a hurry; and my advice to all of her friends is to let her alone. She is 'joined to her idols.'" And the "persistent little woman" ran up stairs and jotted down a spirited account of her pleasant sparring with the spinster in her friendly, even sympathetic journal--the dear little book to which was confided the gentle thoughts of her pure young heart. "Dear little book," she murmured, softly fluttering the scented leaves and glancing here and there at little detatched jottings in her pretty Italian text, "how many of my thoughts, nay hopes and griefs are recorded here." Now and then a smile dawns in her blue eyes, and anon her sweet lip quivers as the written record of a joy or grief meets her gaze. Looking back over earlier years, the pleasures of the fleeting hours, the dawning hopes of maidenhood, the deep, wild sorrow of her slighted love, she suddenly pauses, her finger between the pages, and says to herself with a half-sad smile: "And this was about the time when I fancied myself a poet. Why have I not torn this out long ago? I wonder why I have kept this foolish rhyme all these years?" In soft, murmuring tones she read it aloud, a faint inflection of scorn running through her low, musical voice: RUE! "Violets in the spring You gave me with the dew-tears in their eyes, I said, in faint surprise: Love do not tearful omens round them cling? You answered: Pure as dew Our new-born love, no omens sad have we From morning violets, save that love shall be Forever fresh and new. "Roses, through summer's scope, You brought me when the violets were flown-- Flushed, like the dawn--full-blown; No folded leaves where hope could 'live in hope,' I moaned; the perfume soon departs; The scented leaves fall from the thorny stem. You said: But they were sun-kissed, child, what then? The fragrance lingers yet within our hearts. "November's 'flying gold' Drives through the 'ruined woodlands,' drift on drift, Nor violet nor rose, your later gift, Love's foolish, sun-kissed story has been told. Dear, were you false or true? I know not--only this: Love had its blight; Nor dews nor fragrance fill my heart to-night-- But only--_Rue_! "OCEAN VIEW, November, 1866." "Rue!" she repeats, with a low, bitter laugh; "ah, me, I have been gathering a harvest of _rue_ all my life." The leaves fall together over the sorrowful, girlish rhyme, the book drops from her hand, and, sighing, she throws herself down on a low divan of cushioned pale blue silk, looking idly out of the open window at the evening sky glowing with the opalescent hues of a summer's sunset.