as “I am quite well, and I hope these few lines will find you the same,” and there stopped.  She ascribed the difficulty to her own mental and clerical defects, but I think it lay quite as much in the nature of the relation.  How was she to express confidence when she distrusted? how express distrust when her maidenly promptings told her it was an indelicate solicitation?  She could say Brindle had gone dry and the blind mare had foaled, or that crops were good; but what was that to say when her heart was thirsting and drying up?  She blotted the paper and her eyes and her hands, but she could not write a line.  She was a sensible girl, and gave it up, leaving her love to grow its own growth.  The tree had been planted in good ground, and watered:  it must grow of itself.

By and by military operations brought her lover into the old neighborhood.  I cannot say he put on no affectations with his new rank, that he did not air his shoulder-straps a taste too much; but the manly nature was too loyal to sin from mere vanity.  He seemed natural, easy, pleased with her, and urged a speedy wedding.

We may guess how the Lassie—­we must give her a name, and that will do—­worshiped her King Cophetua in shoulder-straps.  Had he not stooped from his well-won, honorable height, the serene azure of his blue uniform, to sue for her?  In all the humility of her pure loving heart she poured out her thankfulness to the Giver of all good for this supreme blessing of his love.

In the midst of this peace and content her brother appeared with a flag of truce.  He was hailed as a prosperous prodigal, for he too was a lad of metal, but he brought one with him that made poor Lassie start and tremble.  It was a lady, young and beautiful, clad in deep mourning.  Although sad and retiring, there was that dangerous charm about her which men are lured by, and which women dread—­a subtle influence of look and gesture and tone that sets the pulses mad.  She was going for the remains of her husband, and told a pathetic story, but only too well.  She used always the same language, cried at the same places, and seemed altogether too perfect in her part for it to be entirely natural.  So, at least, Lassie thought, even while reproaching herself for being hard on a sister in affliction.  Yet she could not escape the bitterness of the thought that the widow, Mrs. G——­, was “a real lady”—­that ideal rival she had been so long dreading in her lover’s absence; and now that he had come, the rival had also come.

Her brother dropped a hint or two about the lady:  Mrs. G——­ had the “shads,” “vodles” of bank-stock and niggers, and she paid well for small service.  If King Cophetua could get leave to escort her to head-quarters, Mrs. G——­ would foot the bills and do the handsome thing.  It was hard such a woman should have to go on such a sad business alone.