Thus ended my personal acquaintance with the little Button-Rose.  But that first strong impression on my fancy was indelible.  The flower still lived in my memory, surrounded by associations which gave it a mystic charm.  By degrees I ceased to miss it from the window; but that strange garden scene grew more and more vivid, and became a cabinet picture in one of the little inner chambers of memory, where I often pondered it with a delicious sense of mystery.  The rose and humming-bird seemed to me the chief actors in the magic pantomime, and they were some way connected with my dear Aunt Linny and the black-eyed young man; but what it all meant was the great puzzle of my busy little brain.  It has sometimes been a matter of curious speculation to me, what share that diminutive flower had in the development of my mind and character.  With it, so it seems to me, began the first dawn of a conscious inner life.  I can still recollect with wonderful distinctness what I have thought and felt since that date, while all the preceding years are vague and shadowy as an ill-remembered dream.  From them I can only conjure up, as it were, my outward form,—­a happy animal existence, with which scarce a feeling of self is connected; but from the time when I bore a part in this little fragment of a romance the current of identity flows on unbroken.  From that light waking touch, perchance, the whole subsequent development took form and tone.—­But, gentle reader, your pardon!  This is nothing to my story.

CHAPTER II.

Ten years had slipped away, and I was now in my sixteenth year.  Of course, my little cabinet picture had been joined by many others.  It was now but one in an extensive gallery; and the modest little gem, dimmed with dust, and hidden by larger pieces, had not been thought of for many a day.

External circumstances had remained much the same with us; only one great change, the death of my dear grandmother, having occurred in the family.  My aunt presided over her father’s household, and the admirable order and good taste which pervaded every department bore witness how well she understood combining the elements of a home.

Aunt Linny, now twenty-seven years of age, had lost nothing of her former attractiveness.  The brilliant, impulsive girl had but ripened into the still more lovely woman.  Her cheek was not faded nor her eye dimmed.  There was the same frankness, the same heart in her glance, her smile, the warm pressure of her hand, but tempered by experience, reflection, and self-control.  One felt that she could be loved and trusted with the whole heart and judgment.  Her personal attractions, and yet more the charm of her sensible, genial, and racy conversation, brought to our house many pleasant visitors, and made her the sparkling centre of every circle into which she could be drawn.  But it was rarely that she could be beguiled from home; for, since her mother’s death, she had devoted herself heart and soul to her widowed father.