so rich a prize?'

"Let your own better nature teach you whether I have deserved this mockery,' exclaimed Lena, vehemently. Oh, Walter! Walter! whom can I trust since you too have deceived me?' With these words, she turned away hastily to conceal her gushing tears, and entered the house, leaving Geysbert perfectly confounded at her sudden change of manner. "When she reached her own room she gave way to a burst of agony which fully revealed to her the nature of her own feelings. She knew that she loved, deeply and devotedly, but along with this knowledge came the bitter recollection that she could never hope to inspire love in another. She thought with anguish upon the language which she had just heard from Walter's lips; she would have given worlds to have been able to believe it; but no; he, of all other men-so handsome, so gifted-it could not be that he could look with love upon her. It was a fearful thing to recognise in Walter Geysbert only the interested and venal suitor, but to her mind there seemed no alternative.

"Geysbert, on his part, could only attribute her indignant rejection of him to pride. He remembered that in her eyes he was only her father's clerk; and a stern and stubborn resolution took possession of him. During the few days that preceded his departure, they never met except at table. A cold respect characterized all Geysbert's demeanour towards Lena. He seemed to have forgotten or at least determined that she should forget his proffered suit, for neither by word or look did he ever remind her of the past. Thus they parted. No word of explanation was uttered, no kind glance, or unbidden tear melted the icy wall which pride had raised between them. They parted with wounded tenderness and bitter feelings strangely commingled in their bosoms; and each knew their parting was to be a life-long sorrow.

"Months passed away in dreary hopelessness and sorrow to Lena, when her father one day brought home a letter from Walter Geysbert.

"You will have learned by the time this reaches you of my father's death, (so said the letter,) but there are other circumstances which may require some explanations to so old a friend. In early life my father was greatly indebted to an elder brother, who afforded him the means of making a fortune. That brother afterwards died a bankrupt, and his only child, my cousin Gertrude, has been like a daughter in my father's house ever since. It was my father's cherished wish to see us united, and at his bedside, the evening before his death, we were married. It was a melancholy bridal; and I pray you to offer me no congratulations. Gertrude is a good and gentle creature, and if

of the different fate I once dreamed of attaining, I subdue my repinings by the reflection that I have only performed my duty.'

Mr. Von Elmer read the letter aloud as he sate in the porch at sunset. Lena stood behind him holding the silver tobacco-case from which he was about to fill his pipe as soon as he had finished reading. Her cheek grew deadly pale, but she uttered not a word.

"I did not know my cousin Geysbert was so rich,' said Mrs. Von Elmer, scarcely looking up from her knitting.

"He is one of the richest merchants in Amsterdam.'

"Why did he send Walter out to this country as a clerk?'

666

For fear that riches would spoil him.' "Did not Walter know of his father's wealth?' "Not until I informed him, a few days before he sailed.'

"Lena waited to hear no more, but, hurrying from the room, sought in solitude to silence the bitter cry that rose up within her wronged heart. She saw it all now. Walter Geysbert had truly loved her; he had hushed all expression of his feelings while he was only the humble clerk, but no sooner did he find himself her equal in station and her superior in fortune, than he had come to her with the proffer of that noble heart. And she had rejected it. In the blindness of her pride and self-distrust and base suspicion, she had trampled in scorn upon the priceless offering. Now he was lost to her for ever. Henceforth a life of loneliness and self-reproach must be her atonement for thus wronging two true hearts.

"Now I have told you a true story, my children; have I not proved to you the existence of a woman whose want of the very quality we call personal vanity caused all her sorrow?”

"But you have not finished your story, grandmamma. What became of Lena? Did she ever marry?"

"She did."

"Then all her romantic ideas vanished with her youth, I suppose."

“No; for her marriage was the finish of her youth's romance, converting it into a blessed reality. Lena was just turning that awkward corner in life which brings a woman among the

thirties,' when Walter Geysbert returned to America, a widower, with an infant daughter. He did not come to renew his early vows, but he still regarded Lena with a deep and earnest interest. He had scarcely expected to find her still unmarried, and in the pleasure of their renewed friendship the lapse of time was forgotten or disregarded. He finally ventured to allude to the painful past, and then Lena honestly and candidly avowed her long-expiated error. A

CHAPTER I.

HORACE MANSFIELD was rapidly becoming a misanthrope-yet stay, that may be too harsh a term to apply to my young hero, for, although shunning society,

"He hated not his fellow-men, While from their close companionship he shrank, And in rapt converse with the dead, forgot To wave the mystic wand which must reveal The sources, whence flow streams of deeper happiness."

For, with an almost hermit-like seclusion from the world did he shut himself within the narrow limits of his study-seldom going thence unless to stroll in meditative mood, with folded arms and eyes downcast, through the adjoining forest. Earthquakes might shake the globethrones totter from their base, and kings bite the dust what then? To him, it was no more than the sighing of the autumnal blast, sweeping in its course from the monarchs of the wood their gorgeous diadems!

Already at the age of twenty-three, he had never felt the passion of love, nor looked with deeper emotion upon any of Eve's fair daughters, than he did upon the painted butterfly glancing in giddy circles before him, and should either approach too near, he would probably have brushed both from his path with the same stoical indifference-pretty, harmless creatures, butterflies and maidens!

Now this was a most unfortunate state of things for Mr. Mansfield, Senior. A widower for many long years, and too much attached to the memory of the departed to think of marrying a second time, he had suffered himself to look forward with pleased anticipation to the period when Horace, his only child, should be old enough to take a wife. Ah! the presence of a young charming bride, how it would change all things at the lonely old Hall! What magic would her sweet voice exert-how would her lightest footfall thrill his heart with the glad ness of other days! Bless her bright eyes, and her sunny smile-already the old gentleman

doted upon this ignis fatuus of his imagination.

How great then was his disappointment to find Horace, at the age of manhood, too deeply absorbed by the Portias and Lucretias of ancient days, to bestow even a thought upon living beauties going back into the dim ages of the past, and there falling in raptures over the virtues of a Cornelia, or the charms of a Helen, and would take to his arms an old musty blackletter folio with more delight, than he would clasp the fairest copy of womankind. In vain the old gentleman preached to his moody son— in vain tossing upon a sleepless pillow, he, night after night, strove to devise some plan to draw him from his studies-one day he would propose hunting, another, fishing; sometimes he would urge travel, or suggest a winter in the city. But looking up with a dreamy air, Horace would only shrug his shoulders, utter something between a yawn and a groan, and then plunge anew into the labyrinth of bygone ages, or puzzle his brains with some metaphysical question. Besides,

"He was in logic a great critic
Profoundly skilled in analytic;
He could distinguish and divide

A hair 'twixt south and southwest side.
In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater,

Besides 'twas known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs do squeak!"

"Confound all books!" would the old gentleman exclaim. And indeed had books been as rare as in the days of the worshipful Knight of La Mancha, how gladly would Mr. Mansfield have emulated the zeal of the worthy curate and barber, and consigned to the flames those silent yet sorcerous enemies to his hopes. But in these "latter days," when, with the swiftness with which one wave chases another, as the speed of thought, or the constant dropping of sand in the inverted hour-glass, the teeming Press sends forth her offspring, well he knew, that from the glowing mass, another, Phoenixlike, would arise from its ashes, and its name be "Legion!" Therefore smothering his fiery

And no wonder the poor old gentleman was out of all patience, for it did seem a thousand pities that such a fine, handsome young fellow as Horace, should be thus wasting the freshness of his youth, encased like a mummy in a catacomb!

And so one day Mr. Mansfield suddenly broke into this living tomb, making considerable bustle, too, as he did so, by slamming the door, and kicking over a huge Josephus-but bless you the student heeded it no more than he

would the dancing of a thistle-down through the open window. Dragging a chair not very gently to the table, the old gentleman seated himself facing his abstracted son, where he might have sat unnoticed till doomsday had he not taken a pretty sure way of making his presence known, namely, by suddenly sweeping his large bony hand over the open page, and hurling the book under the table. It must be confessed Horace was too well accustomed to this mode of salutation to express any surprise,

"Well, father?"

"Now I tell you what it is, Horace," exclaimed the old gentleman, striking his fist upon the voluminous mass of papers before him; "I can't stand this any longer-this sort of life won't do for me. I have borne it as patiently as a saint for as many years as you can count fingers and toes, and now there must be an end of it. I ask you if you don't feel ashamed of yourself,-I ask you if you are doing anything to make your old father happy, perched up there week in and week out, like a

piece of petrified clay, when you should be looking out for a wife, and gladdening my old eyes, ere death closes them for ever, by the sight of your happiness."

Horace smiled, shook his head, and tracing a parallelogram on the paper before him, replied:

"Methinks, my dear father, it would have been no greater absurdity for old Thomas Aquinas to have doffed the cowl, and relaxed his stern visage into the soft simper of a lover's smile, than for me to break from these rusty fetters, only to yield allegiance to Love's rosy bondage."

"Fiddle-de-dee!-Then I tell you what I've a great mind to do,-fall into the what-doyou-call-it bondage of Love myself," answered the old gentleman. "Now, suppose I get a wife, Horace ?"

"No doubt, father, a woman would be very useful in looking after the house, really, I think your suggestion most excellent."

"Look after the house, you iceberg!-Mrs. Dimity does that, don't she? No, I want no wife that will be for ever bustling about in the kitchen and pantry-I want society, I tell you -I am tired of sitting like an old solitary badger, or of smoking my pipe with the gravity