Not many days after their intimacy commenced, as Mrs. Sandford sat watching Alice at her work, it occurred to her that there was a look of tender sorrow, an unexplained melancholy, which her recent bereavement did not wholly account for.  Not that the girl was given to romantic sighs or tragic starts, or that she carried a miniature for lachrymose exercises; but it was evident that she had what we term “a history.”  She was frank and cheerful, although there was palpably something kept back, and her cheerfulness was like the mournful beauty of flowers that blossom over graves.  No sympathetic nature could refuse confidence to Mrs. Sandford, and it was not long before she discovered that Alice had passed through the golden gate to which all footsteps tend, and from which no one comes back except with a change that colors all the after life.

“And so you are in love, poor child!” said Mrs. Sandford, compassionately.

“I have been” (with a gentle emphasis).

“Ah, you think you are past it now, I suppose?”

“I sha’n’t forget soon,—­I could not, if I would; but love is over,—­gone like yesterday’s sunshine.”

“But the sun shines again to-day.”

“Well, if you prefer another comparison,” said Alice, smiling faintly,—­“gone out like yesterday’s fire.”

“Fire lurks a long time in the ashes unseen, my dear.”

Alice dropped her needle and looked steadily at her companion.

“I am young,” she said; “yet I have outgrown the school-girl period.  The current of my life has flowed in a deep channel:  the shallow little brook may fancy its first spring-freshet to be a Niagara; but my feelings have swelled with no transient overflow.  I gave my utmost love and devotion to a man I thought worthy.  He treated me with neglect, and at last falsified his word in offering his hand to another, I do not hate him.  I have none of that alchemy which changes despised love to gall.  But I could never forgive him, nor trust him again.  And if he, who seemed always so frank, so earnest, so tender, so single in his aims,—­if he could not be trusted, I do not know where I could rest my heart and say,—­’Here I am safe, whatever betide!’”

It was a strange thing for Alice to speak in such an exalted strain, and she trembled as she tried to resume her sewing.  The thread slipped and knotted; the needle broke and pricked her finger; and then, feeling her cheeks begin to glow, she laid down her work and turned to the window.

“Don’t lose all faith, Alice; there are true hearts in the world.  Perhaps this lover of yours, now, has repented and is striving to find you.  Or you may have been misinformed as to the extent of his treachery.  To take your own simile, you don’t accuse the brook of fickleness merely because it eddies around under some flowery bank; after it has made the circle, it keeps on its steady course.”

Alice only shook her head, still keeping her face averted to conceal the tremor of her lips.