It often happens to such women to expend on some brother that stock of hero-worship and devotion which it has not come in their way to give to a nearer friend.  Alas! it is building on a sandy foundation; for, just as the union of hearts is complete, the chemical affinity which began in the cradle, and strengthens with every year of life, is dissolved by the introduction of that third element which makes of the brother a husband, while the new combination casts out the old,—­sometimes with a disagreeable effervescence.

John and Grace Seymour were two only children of a very affectionate family; and they had grown up in the closest habits of intimacy.  They had written to each other those long letters in which thoughtful people who live in retired situations delight; letters not of outward events, but of sentiments and opinions, the phases of the inner life.  They had studied and pursued courses of reading together.  They had together organized and carried on works of benevolence and charity.

The brother and sister had been left joint heirs of a large manufacturing property, employing hundreds of hands, in their vicinity; and the care and cultivation of these work-people, the education of their children, had been most conscientiously upon their minds.  Half of every Sunday they devoted together to labors in the Sunday school of their manufacturing village; and the two worked so harmoniously together in the interests of their life, that Grace had never felt the want of any domestic ties or relations other than those that she had.

Our readers may perhaps, therefore, concede that, among the many claimants for their sympathy in this cross-grained world of ours, some few grains of it may properly be due to Grace.

Things are trials that try us:  afflictions are what afflict us; and, under this showing, Grace was both tried and afflicted by the sudden engagement of her brother.  When the whole groundwork on which one’s daily life is built caves in, and falls into the cellar without one moment’s warning, it is not in human nature to pick one’s self up, and reconstruct and rearrange in a moment.  So Grace thought, at any rate; but she made a hurried effort to dash back her tears, and gulp down a rising in her throat, anxious only not to be selfish, and not to disgust her brother in the outset with any personal egotism.

So she ran to the front door to meet him, and fell into his arms, trying so hard to seem congratulatory and affectionate that she broke out into sobbing.

“My dear Gracie,” said John, embracing and kissing her with that gushing fervor with which newly engaged gentlemen are apt to deluge every creature whom they meet, “you’ve got my letter.  Well, were not you astonished?”

“O John, it was so sudden!” was all poor Grace could say.  “And you know, John, since mother died, you and I have been all in all to each other.”

“And so we shall be, Gracie.  Why, yes, of course we shall,” he said, stroking her hair, and playing with her trembling, thin, white hands.  “Why, this only makes me love you the more now; and you will love my little Lillie:  fact is, you can’t help it.  We shall both of us be happier for having her here.”