an ecclesiastical mission to the United States. He reached New York and presented himself at his friend's house, which from this moment became his home. Mrs. De Grey had recently given birth to a son; her husband was confined to his room by illness, reduced to a shadow of his former self by repeated sensual excesses. He survived Herbert's arrival but a couple of months; and after his death the rumor went abroad that he had by his last will settled a handsome income upon the priest, on condition that he would continue to reside with his widow, and take the entire charge of his boy's education. This rumor was confirmed by the event. For twenty-five years, at the time of which I write, Herbert had lived under Mrs. De Grey's roof as her friend and companion and counsellor, and as her son's tutor. Once reconciled to his friend, he had gradually dropped his priestly character. He was of an essentially devout temperament, but he craved neither parish nor pulpit. On the other hand, he had become an indefatigable student. His late friend had bequeathed to him a valuable library, which he gradually enlarged. His passion for study, however, appeared singularly disinterested, inasmuch as, for many years, his little friend Paul was the sole witness and receptacle of his learning. It is true that he composed a large portion of a History of the Catholic Church in America, which, although the manuscript exists, has never seen, and, I suppose, is never destined to see, the light. It is in the very best keeping, for it contains an immense array of facts. The work is written, not from a sympathetic, but from a strictly respectful point of view; but it has a fatal defect, it lacks unction. The same complaint might have been made of Father Herbert's personal character. He was the soul of politeness, but it was a cold and formal courtesy. When he smiled, it was, as the French say, with the end of his lips, and when he took your hand, with the end of his fingers. He had had a charming face in his younger days, and, when gentlemen dressed their hair with powder, his fine black eyes must have produced the very best effect. But he had lost his hair, and he wore on his naked crown a little black silk cap. Round his neck he had a black cravat of many folds, without any collar. He was short and slight, with a stoop in his shoulders, and a handsome pair of hands. "If it were not for a sad sign to the contrary," said Mrs. De Grey, in pursuance of her resolve to take counsel of her friend, "I should believe I am growing younger." "What is the sign to the contrary?” asked Herbert. "I'm losing my eyes. I can't see to read. Suppose I should become blind." "And what makes you suspect that you are growing young again?" "I feel lonely. I lack company. I miss Paul." "You will have Paul back in a year." "Yes; but in the mean while I shall be miserable. I wish I knew some nice person whom I might ask to stay with me." "Why don't you take a companion, —some poor gentlewoman in search of a home? She would read to you, and talk to you." She "No; that would be dreadful. would be sure to be old and ugly. I should like some one to take Paul's place, - some one young and fresh like him. We're all so terribly old, in the house. You're at least seventy; I'm sixty-five" (Mrs. De Grey was pleased to say); "Deborah is sixty, the cook and coachman are fifty-five apiece." "You want a young girl then?" "Yes, some nice, fresh young girl, who would laugh once in a while, and make a little music, a little sound in the house." - "Well," said Herbert, after reflecting a moment, "you had better suit yourself before Paul comes home. You have only a year." "Dear me," said Mrs. De Grey; "I should n't feel myself obliged to turn. fidence that in half an hour she was in her out on Paul's account." Father Herbert looked at his companion with a penetrating glance. "Nevertheless, my dear lady," he said, "you know what I mean." "O yes, I know what you mean, and you, Father Herbert, know what I think." “Yes, madam, and, allow me to add, that I don't greatly care. Why should I? I hope with all my heart that you'll never find yourself compelled to think otherwise." "It is certain," said Mrs. De Grey, "that Paul has had time to play out his little tragedy a dozen times over." "His father," rejoined Herbert, gravely, "was twenty-six years old." At these words Mrs. De Grey looked at the priest with a slight frown and a flushed cheek. But he took no pains to meet her eyes, and in a few moments she had recovered, in silence, her habitual calmness. Within a week after this conversation Mrs. De Grey observed at church two persons who appeared to be strangers in the congregation: an elderly woman, meanly clad, and evidently in ill health, but with a great refinement of person and manner; and a young girl whom Mrs. De Grey took for her daughter. On the following Sunday she again found them at their devotions, and was forcibly struck by a look of sadness and trouble in their faces and attitude. On the third Sunday they were absent; but it happened that during the walk, going to confession, she met the young girl, pale, alone, and dressed in mourning, apparently just leaving the confessional. Something in her gait and aspect assured Mrs. De Grey that she was alone in the world, friendless and helpless; and the good lady, who at times was acutely sensible of her own isolation in society, felt a strong and sympathetic prompting to speak to the stranger, and ask the secret of her sorrow. She stopped her before she left the church, and, addressing her with the utmost kindness, succeeded so speedily in winning her con possession of the young girl's entire history. She had just lost her mother, and she found herself in the great city penniless, and all but houseless. They were from the South; her father had been an officer in the navy, and had perished at sea, two years before. Her mother's health had failed, and they had come to New York, ill-advisedly enough, to consult an eminent physician. He had been very kind, he had taken no fees, but his skill had been applied in vain. Their money had melted away in other directions, — for food and lodging and clothing. There had been enough left to give the poor lady a decent burial; but no means of support save her own exertions remained for the young girl. She had no relatives to look to, but she professed herself abundantly willing to work. “I look weak," she said, "and pale, but I'm really strong. It's only that I'm tired, and sad. I'm ready to do anything. But I don't know where to look." She had lost her color and the roundness and elasticity of youth; she was thin and ill-dressed; but Mrs. De Grey saw that at her best she must be properly a very pretty creature, and that she was evidently, by rights, a charming girl. She looked at the elder lady with lustrous, appealing blue eyes from under the hideous black bonnet in which her masses of soft light hair were tucked away. She assured her that she had received a very good education, and that she played on the piano-forte. Mrs. De Grey fancied her divested of her rusty weeds, and dressed in a white frock and a blue ribbon, reading aloud at an open window, or touching the keys of her old not unmelodious spinnet; for if she took her (as she mentally phrased it) Mrs. De Grey was resolved that she would not be harassed with the sight of her black garments. It was plain that, frightened and faint and nervous as she was, the poor child would take any service unconditionally. She kissed her then tenderly within the sacred precinct, and led her away to her carriage, quite forgetting her business with her confessor. On the following day Margaret Aldis (such was the young girl's name) was transferred in the same vehicle to Mrs. De Grey's own residence. This edifice was demolished some, years ago, and the place where it stood forms at the present moment the very centre of a turbulent thoroughfare. But at the period of which I speak it stood on the outskirts of the town, with as vast a prospect of open country in one direction as in the other of close-built streets. It was an excellent old mansion, moreover, in the best taste of the time, with large square rooms and broad halls and deep windows, and, above all, a delightful great garden, hedged off from the road by walls of dense verdure. Here, steeped in repose and physical comfort, rescued from the turbid stream of common life, and placed apart in the glow of tempered sunshine, valued, esteemed, caressed, and yet feeling that she was not a mere passive object of charity, but that she was doing her simple utmost to requite her protectress, poor Miss Aldis bloomed and flowered afresh. With rest and luxury and leisure, her natural gayety and beauty came back to her. Her beauty was not dazzling, indeed, nor her gayety obtrusive; but, united, they were the flower of girlish grace. She still retained a certain tenuity and fragility of aspect, a lightness of tread, a softness of voice, a faintness of coloring, which suggested an intimate acquaintance with suffering. But there seemed to burn, nevertheless, in her deep blue eyes the light of an almost passionate vitality; and there sat on her firm, pale lips the utterance of a determined, devoted will. It seemed at times as if she gave herself up with a sensuous, reckless, halfthankless freedom to the mere consciousness of security. It was evident that she had an innate love of luxury. She would sometimes sit, motionless, for hours, with her head thrown back, and her eyes slowly wandering, in a silent ecstasy of content. At these times Father Herbert, who had ob served her attentively from the moment of her arrival (for, scholar and recluse as he was, he had not lost the faculty of appreciating feminine grace), - at these times the old priest would watch her covertly and marvel at the fantastic, soulless creature whom Mrs. De Grey had taken to her side. One evening, after a prolonged stupor of this sort, in which the young girl had neither moved nor spoken, sitting like one whose soul had detached itself and was wandering through space, she rose, on Mrs. De Grey's at last giving her an order, and moved forward as if in compliance; and then, suddenly rushing toward the old woman, she fell on her knees, and buried her head in her lap and burst into a paroxysm of sobs. Herbert, who had been standing by, went and laid one hand on her head, and with the other made over it the sign of the cross, in the manner of a benediction, - a consecration of the passionate gratitude which had finally broken out into utterance. From this moment he loved her. Margaret read aloud to Mrs. De Grey, and on Sunday evenings sang in a clear, sweet voice the chants of their Church, and occupied herself constantly with fine needle-work, in which she possessed great skill. They spent the long summer mornings together, in reading and work and talk. Margaret told her companion the simple, sad details of the history of which she had already given her the outline; and Mrs. De Grey, who found it natural to look upon them as a kind of practical romance organized for her entertainment, made her repeat them over a dozen times. Mrs. De Grey, too, honored the young girl with a recital of her own biography, which, in its vast vacuity, produced upon Margaret's mind a vague impression of grandeur. The vacuity, indeed, was relieved by the figure of Paul, whom Mrs. De Grey never grew weary of describing, and of whom, finally, Margaret grew very fond of thinking. She listened most attentively to Mrs. De Grey's eulogies of her son, and thought it a great pity he was not at Herbert, who knew the force of this term. And, smiling a moment with inoffensive scorn, he relapsed into his wonted gravity. "I think he looks very sad," said Margaret, timidly. "Fiddlesticks!" cried Herbert, impatiently. "He looks like a coxcomb. Of course, it's the Frenchman's fault," he added, more gently. "Why on earth does he send us his picture at all? It's a great piece of impertinence. Does he think we've forgotten him? When I want to remember my boy, I have something better to look to than that flaunting bit of ivory." At these words the two ladies went off, carrying the portrait with them, to read Paul's letter in private. It was in eight pages, and Margaret read it aloud. Then, when she had finished, she read it again; and in the evening she read it once more. The next day, Mrs. De Grey, taking the young girl quite into her confidence, brought out a large packet containing his earlier letters, and Margaret spent the whole morning in reading them over aloud. That evening she took a stroll in the garden alone, home. And then she began to long for his return, and then, suddenly, she began to fear it. Perhaps he would dislike her being in the house, and turn her out of doors. It was evident that his mother was not prepared to contradict him. Perhaps worse still-he would marry some foreign woman, and bring her home, and she would turn wickedly jealous of Margaret (in the manner of foreign women). De Grey, roaming through Europe, took for granted, piously enough, that he was never absent from his good mother's thoughts; but he remained superbly unconscious of the dignity which he had usurped in the meditations of her humble companion. Truly, we know where our lives begin, but who shall say where they end? Here was a careless young gentleman whose existence enjoyed a perpetual echo in the soul of a poor girl utterly unknown to him. Mrs. De Grey had two portraits of her son, which, of course, she lost no time in exhibiting to Margaret,—one taken in his boyhood, with brilliant red hair and cheeks, the lad's body encased in a bright blue jacket, and his neck encircled in a frill, open very low; the other, the garden in which he had played as executed just before his departure, a a boy, and lounged and dreamed as a handsome young man in a buff waist- young man. She found his name - his coat, clean shaven, with an animated beautiful name-rudely cut on a wooden countenance, dark, close-curling auburn bench. Introduced, as it seemed to hair, and very fine eyes. The former her that she had been by his letters, of these designs Margaret thought a into the precincts of his personality, very pretty child; but to the other the the mystery of his being, the magic poor girl straightway lost her heart, circle of his feelings and opinions and the more easily that Mrs. De Grey as- fancies; wandering by his side, unseen, sured her, that, although the picture was over Europe, and treading, unheard, handsome enough, it conveyed but the the sounding pavements of famous faintest idea of her boy's adorable flesh churches and palaces, she felt that she and blood. In a couple of months tasted for the first time of the substance arrived a long - expected letter from and sweetness of life. Margaret walked Paul, and with it another portrait,-a about for an hour in the starlight, miniature, painted in Paris by a famous among the dusky, perfumed alleys. Mrs. artist. Here Paul appeared a far more De Grey, feeling unwell, had gone to elegant figure than in the work of the her room. The young girl heard the American painter. In what the change far-off hum of the city slowly decrease consisted it was hard to tell; but his and expire, and then, when the stillness mother declared that it was easy to see of the night was unbroken, she came that he had spent two years in the best back into the parlor across the long company in Europe. window, and lit one of the great silver "O, the best company!" said Father candlesticks that decorated the ends of - the mantel. She carried it to the wall where Mrs. De Grey had suspended her son's miniature, having first inserted it in an immense gold frame, from which she had expelled a less valued picture. Margaret felt that she must see the portrait before she went to bed. There was a certain charm and ravishment in beholding it privately by candlelight. The wind had risen, a warm west wind, and the long white curtains of the open windows swayed and bulged in the gloom in a spectral fashion. Margaret guarded the flame of the candle with her hand, and gazed at the polished surface of the portrait, warm in the light, beneath its glittering plate of glass. What an immensity of life and passion was concentrated into those few square inches of artificial color! The young man's eyes seemed to gaze at her with a look of profound recognition. They held her fascinated; she lingered on the spot, unable to move. Suddenly the clock on the chimneypiece rang out a single clear stroke. Margaret started and turned about, at the thought that it was already half past ten. She raised her candle aloft to look at the dial-plate; and perceived three things: that it was one o'clock in the morning, that her candle was half burnt out, and that some one was watching her from the other side of the room. Setting down her light, she recognized Father Herbert. "Well, Miss Aldis," he said, coming into the light, "what do you think of it ?" Margaret was startled and confused, but not abashed. "How long have I been here?" she asked, simply. dis?" he asked, apparently with a painful effort. "I think he's very handsome," said Margaret, frankly. "He's not so handsome as that," said Herbert. "His mother says he's handsomer." "A mother's testimony in such cases worth very little. Paul is well enough, but he's no miracle." is ret. "I think he looks sad," said Marga"His mother says he 's very gay." "He may have changed vastly within two years. Do you think," the old man added, after a pause, "that he looks like a man in love?" "I don't know," said Margaret, in a low voice. "I never saw one." "Never?" said the priest, with an earnestness which surprised the young girl. She blushed a little. "Never, Father Herbert." The priest's dark eyes were fixed on her with a strange intensity of expression. "I hope, my child, you never may," he said, solemnly. The tone of his voice was not unkind, but it seemed to Margaret as if there were something cruel and chilling in the wish. "Why not I as well as another?" she asked. The old man shrugged his shoulders. "O, it's a long story," he said. The summer passed away and flushed into autumn, and the autumn slowly faded, and finally expired in the cold embrace of December. Mrs. De Grey had written to her son of her having taken Margaret into her service. At this time came a letter in which the young man was pleased to express his "I have no idea. I myself have satisfaction at this measure. "Present been here half an hour." "It was very kind of you not to disturb me," said Margaret, less simply. "It was a very pretty picture," said Herbert. "O, it's beautiful!" cried the young girl, casting another glance at the portrait over her shoulder. The old man smiled sadly, and turned away, and then, coming back, "How do you like our young man, Miss Al my compliments to Miss Aldis," he wrote, "and assure her of my gratitude for the comfort she has given my dear mother, of which, indeed, I hope before very long to inform her in person." In writing these good-natured words Paul De Grey little suspected the infinite reverberation they were to have in poor Margaret's heart. A month later arrived a letter, which was handed to Mrs. De Grey at breakfast. "You |