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the cheek, the unquestioning trust of the eyes, were gone. Experience and pain had done the work of years. It was suffering which had struck out the first fresh tints of youth. It was like an untimely frost on a Spring flower. There was a tension about the mouth, a depth in the eyes, never seen there before. The dreaming girl had gone forever; in her place was the woman.

"I am sorry, Tilda, you should feel troubled about me," she said, in a strangely quiet tone. "I am not as well as usual. I will ask Mr. Mallane myself, to-morrow, to let me go home for a week. I will go and walk a little way now. I think the air will do me good."

Eirene had been gone but a few moments, when Paul Mallane knocked at the open door below.

In the back room Mrs. Goodlove was washing the tea-dishes, amid a flock of quarreling children. The whole air of the place was hot as an oven. The heat in the front room, with the smell of the last winter's smoke and of yesterday's cabbage, was stifling to Paul; while Mrs. Goodlove, with her sleeves above her elbows and a greasy apron on, began to rattle and roll up a torn paper-curtain while she asked him to be seated, adding, that she would go and see if Eirene was in. By this time Tilda, who had seen Paul come across the street, leaned over the balusters, where, through the open door, she looked him directly in the face, and exclaimed, in no dulcet tone,

"You needn't come here, Paul Mallane. Eirene Vale is not in; and if she was, she would not see you."

"Thank you," said Paul, and walked deliberately out. As he left the house, he observed Bella in an airy robe of azure sitting in the garden veranda and joined her. Not long after, Eirene, coming down the street, saw the two sitting there, and they saw her. As she looked up, Paul bowed; but there was a remoteness that could not be measured in the recognition. Had he been on the other side of the earth, he could not have seemed further away. Still,

upon her face she felt his kisses, and she said,

"One week ago he called me his promised wife. Can this be he?"

Paul, looking after her, noted the slight form, the weary step, the plain dress, the white sun-bonnet hiding her face, and said,

"She is the woman I have promised to marry, and she lives in that horrid place!"

He looked at the woman by his side, her fair hair gleaming through a net of silver thread; at the transparent robe of blue, in whose elegant fabric and fashion Paris seemed to have surpassed itself; at the delicate hands glittering with gems; at the woman whom poverty and pain and care had never touched, sitting perfectly picturesque in her summer setting of flowers and vines, and he felt the contrast. It is doubtful if the fairest woman knows how much she may owe to her graceful and gracious surroundings. It is difficult for the loveliest of women to realize how much she may lose because her beauty struggles into flower in a harsh atmosphere and amid vulgar associations. Eirene, as she stepped into Seth Goodlove's odoriferous hall, felt the pang in her heart, without knowing one half of her disadvantages. The beauty of her soul and of her face had been so potent as to command love in defiance of conditions the most repelling to a man like Paul Mallane. He loved Eirene, and did not love the woman by his side; yet her art, with the glamor of her accompaniments, were powerful enough to hold him from the woman that he loved. Bella saw Eirene, and Paul's following and returning glance, and understood it. She was perfectly aware of her own immense advantage, and made the most of it. How was Paul to know that the perfect picture which she made, with the very effect that it had upon himself, was the result of hours and days of study? for the most diplomatic of men is an unsuspecting infant before the small but occult arts of an artful woman. Paul looked at Bella, and saw

only the pale, transparent skin, the shy, deprecating, appealing air which had enchanted him for the last month. She was no longer arch and tantalizing; never mentioned the shop-girl, nor teased him about "a little loveress." No; she was so utterly drooping and submissive, so pleadingly tearful. She made him feel all the time that he had done her an injury in not asking her to marry him; and he was still busy making her amends.

"It won't be long before she will be gone," he said to himself; "then I can go back and ask my little girl's pardon. I'll tell her just how it has been; and she will forgive me, when she sees how much I'm sacrificing to marry her." Paul was not in an enviable state of mind. No man ever is who is doing his best to divide himself between two women. Through all these days of utter neglect he had not been without a desire to see Eirene. While seeming utterly oblivious of her, more than once he had looked through the closed blinds of his own room to the utterly uninviting house across the street, and helplessly wished that there were some place where he could visit with Eirene, as he did during the last summer.

"What's the use of going over there?" he asked. "There's that dragon forever on the watch. And if she were not, it's enough to put the sentiment out of any man, to try and talk love amid such a clatter of pots and young ones, with more than the seven smells of Cologne pushing through the door to knock him over. I might meet her in Lover's Walk every evening, and keep her poor little heart assured, at the expense of all the slander that Busyville could concoct," he said. "But I won't. I won't be a scamp-not to her. If I don't keep her sweet heart from aching, I'll keep her pure name from blame."

I am aware that I am throwing away a fine opportunity of showing Paul Mallane to be a villain. According to the way of novels, he should flirt with Isabella Prescott, and promise to marry her by day; write to Eirene secretly, VOL. VI.-28

meet her clandestinely, pursue her, ruin her, and forsake her. The world has had too many of such pictures. If Paul Mallane were such a villain, I should not be writing about him. It would be sad enough for the race that he lived, without perpetuating his picture. Paul Mallane was a man with the possibility in him of a high nobility, which his mother, the prevailing power in his life, had never fed or fostered. He is a thoroughly defective character-one who has missed goodness, as in higher or lower degree we all miss it. The sorrow that he wrought came from the defects and discrepancies of his own nature, not from any deliberate purpose to do a great wrong. The consummate villain, the piercingeyed gentleman of unutterably diabolical attributes, spends his existence chiefly in the novel. I never saw him, therefore I shall not put him in mine.

There was no end to Tabitha Mallane's projects for the enjoyment of the young people. Every day she planned some new picnic, fishing-party, or excursion, all of which Isabella Prescott pronounced to be "lovely," and most reviving to her spirits and delicate health. This was delightful to Mrs. Tabitha, who declared that the dear child must stay till her health should be perfectly restored. At the end of the week Dick took himself off; but Miss Prescott seemed no nearer departing than on the day of her coming. This evening, Paul's desire to see Eirene, quickened by many pricks of conscience, overcame his dislike and dread of the Goodlove house sufficiently to impel him to go across the street to see her. The conviction came suddenly to him, the longer he put off an explanation, the harder it would be to make it; and that moment he wished it were over, and that Bella Prescott were out of the way. But the atmosphere of the house, and Tilda Stade's reception, made him feel as if any intercourse with Eirene at present was impossible. He did not believe a word of Tilda's speech, yet something in him made him glad that she said what she

did; it seemed to afford him an excuse for his actions.

Tilda, having given vent to her temper, was quite willing to believe that she did it "from a sense of duty;" but the same แ sense" "did not incline her to inform Eirene that Paul had called at the house and inquired for her. Presently she went away, and left Eirene alone with her thoughts, and the couple on the opposite veranda, now growing shadowy in the twilight. Eirene gave one glance at them, and then took refuge from the sight in the dimness of the room.

"How near you seemed to me in Cambridge, Paul!" she said; "but within sound of your voice, with only the street between us, it seems as if the universe divided you and me-as if I should never speak with you again."

Soon the piano sent forth the notes of the sweetest air in "Martha," and the melody drew her involuntarily to the window. All that she knew of music was in emotion; this in her was a deep interpreter; it thrilled her, moved her, filled her with bliss or pain. No music had ever seemed so sweet, and yet so sorrowful, as this, coming in to her as she sat alone. It came from him, from her; they were enjoying it together, and she was shut out. Before she knew, she felt herself moving towards it. She looked; the night was dark; no one could see her-no one, not even if she slipped into the garden and listened. There, although no one welcomed her, she would not be so entirely shut away. She stole softly down across the street, and looked around. Nobody was near. She slipped through the side-gate, on to the turf, crossed it to the old cherry-tree, and then looked

up. The long windows of the drawing-room were wide open. There was no one in it but Paul and Miss Prescott, who was sitting before the piano playing. She was evidently perfectly familiar with the opera, for Paul was not turning over the leaves of her music. Instead, he was leaning on the piano near, gazing intently at her. She played on and on, air after air, and all were of an infinite tenderness, imploring, pathetically sweet. There were long pauses between the music, when Paul leaned nearer to the player in the dim light. and his low tones, with the soft, tremulous cadences of her speech,. wandered out to the motionless watcher in the garden. It is a pretty parlorpicture, isn't it?-the handsome young gentleman and lady in the luxurious room, sitting in a tender attitude, certainly, discoursing of music, perhaps ! It is not at all a heart-rending scene to describe. Strange it should have transfixed into a marble whiteness the girl in the garden. She was a foolish little girl, you see, and had much better have been up in the Goodlove bed, sound asleep. It is not much to tell about; it is only a true soul dying its first death in life, in its first desolation of distrust in the being whom it believed to be truth itself. It is only a young, loving, faithful heart aching out there in the darkness; that is all.

"Of course you may go," said John Mallane to Eirene the next morning, as she stood by the desk in his office. "Bless me, child! what's happened to you? Why didn't you ask me before, if you were sick? You need the mountain-air. Go, and stay as long as you please."

A LITTLE FURTHER ON.

ONCE, in our spring-time rambles, in unforgotten days,
Where frail wild roses brightened the quiet woodland ways,
And lilies of the streamlet, and mandrakes pale and sweet,
And many a nameless blossom, lured on and on our feet;

Thou, love, at length grown weary, didst say, "Beneath yon trees I pass to rest a moment; stay thou to gather these;

I go before; yet hasten, for day is well-nigh gone;

I'll wait thee on the homeward way, a little further on."

Again for me the spring-time arrays the fields in bloom,
And tempts my feet to wander 'midst beauty and perfume;
In vain would they beguile me, for unto thee are given
The ever-blooming gardens and vernal fields of heaven.

And, sick with jealous longing, my heart seems cold and dead,
As if life's charm and freshness with thy dear presence fled,
And, in my restless yearning to go where thou art gone,
I seem to hear thee whisper, "A little further on."

In that calm hour I hear it, when Eve is on her way
To close with her cool fingers the weary eye of day,
When, under the soft azure and 'midst the hills of gold
The portals of the West in their crimson pomp unfold.

How oft we gazed together, and questioned if the scene
Were like the heaven we hoped for, so glowing, yet serene,
And deemed through such a gateway God's messengers might bring
Souls from earthly bondage to the palace of the King.

Ah! love, before thy vision lies clear that realm of light;
For me are these chill shadows, this drear and lonely night;
The eyes that, dim with weeping, see not the heavenly dawn;
The breaking heart that seeks not its treasure further on.

And yet in hours inspiring, I seem sometimes to feel
Thy presence, e'en as perfume will some near flower reveal;
An influence uplifting, a sense of sympathy

In all that once together was loved by thee and me;

As if the breathing fragrance, as if the wind's low tone,

And rippling waters, whispered thy love was still my own;

And I recall thy bidding to gather by the way

The sweet spring-flowers that clustered beside our path that day,

And feel thou wouldst not have me to walk through life in gloom,
Unmindful of the blessings that in its pathway bloom;

But gather them like blossoms, ere yet the light be gone,
The while I go to join thee, a little further on.

THE PASSION-PLAY AT OBER-AMMERGAU, JULY, 1870.

It is scarcely necessary here to relate at length the various adventures of two lovelorn damsels, who left their trunks and their travelling-companions at Vienna, and started valiantly upon a pilgrimage to Ober-Ammergau, or to go into the details of their encountering at Munich another lovelorn one come from Switzerland to share their fortunes; to tell how the party gathered unto itself a "great, broad-shouldered, genial Englishman" and his wife, and how the merry quintette proceeded by rail to Wilheim, whence they rode in an open carriage to Ober-Ammergau; to relate their queer experiences in little German inns, the strange dishes, the predominating presence of beer, the curious compounds of smells, the swelling feather-beds that usurped the place of sheets and blankets, the skirmishes for rations, the forays after towels, the pudding-dishes that did duty as wash-basins, the constant guerilla warfare waged upon fleas, the jokes, the laughter, the thousand airy nothings that pluck the sting from discomfort and turn it into jollity; in a word, the difficulties and the delights of a trip into the Bavarian Highlands. Indeed, after so much has been written upon the subject, there remains but one excuse for saying any thing more: the fact that, after all, every thing that can be written upon a work of art to be of any real value must necessarily be subjective; it must be the truthful description or representation of the effect of that work of art upon the mind of the writer. What he learns from books or repeats from the words of others is worthless in comparison with the careful record of one human experience. It is from these varied points of view that we endeavor to catch a vision of things we have not yet seen; and we ask of the favored mortals who have beheld them in the flesh, not their size or their color, but

their effect upon these, our friends' natures. And for this reason only do I dare to give you a peep through my spectacles at the Passion-Play of 1870. We had heard at Munich that two of the principal actors had been drafted, and were ordered into service; but a petition having been sent the King, he permitted the unfortunate peasants to remain till the morning of the 25th, and to enact, for the last time in their lives, perhaps, the scenes with which we are so familiar. We arrived at OberAmmergau early on the 23d, having driven over from Murnau through mountains and forests of surpassing beauty. The little village, nestled in the very heart of the great rocky hills, was all in a stir when we arrived. Mine host was bustling about his inn, at whose hospitable doors wagon-loads of hungry strangers were continually arriving; little knots of peasants were standing about discussing the last preparations; tidy German servant-girls were rushing around with four or five full pots of beer in each hand; the children looked as if they knew that the success of the play depended on their best efforts, and the very donkey that they were harnessing drooped his ears as with a meek pride in his important role of the morrow. Even Tobit's dog, a very frowsy animal, by the way, trotted up and down as if he had a good deal on his mind, and could not possibly stop to talk with common dogs.

We deposited our modest effects at the inn, and then started out to explore the village and its stores of wood-carvings, for which it has always been famous, but had not gone far when a mysterious elderly person in spectacles rushed after us in eager haste from an arbor where he had just before been calmly sipping beer, and whispered in German, with an air of great importance, "There, look there! that is the

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