which constitute my worldly mannerism, and tell you in a few simple words.  When I was about your age, I think my nature must have resembled yours, for many of your ideas and views of duty in this life remind me in a mournfully vague, tender way of my own early youth; and from that far distant time taunting reminiscences float down to me, whispers from my old self long, long dead.  When I was seventeen, I went one June to spend some weeks with my Grandmother Neville, who was an invalid, and resided on the Hudson, near a very picturesque spot, which artists were in the habit of frequenting with their sketch-books.  Allowed a degree of liberty which mamma never accorded me at home, I availed myself of the lax regimen of my grandmother, and roamed at will about the beautiful country adjacent.  In one of these ill-fated excursions I encountered a young artist, who was spending a few days in the neighbourhood.  I was a simple-hearted schoolgirl, untutored in worldly wisdom, and had always spent my vacations with grandmother, who was afflicted with no aristocratic whims and vagaries; who thought it not wholly unpardonable to be poor, and was so old-fashioned as to judge people from their merits, not by the amount of their income tax.

“Belmont Eggleston was then about twenty-five, very handsome, very talented, full of chivalric enthusiasm, and as refined and tender in sensibility as a woman.  We met accidentally at a farmhouse, where a sudden shower drove us for shelter, and from that hour neither could forget the other.  It was the old, old immemorial story—­two fresh young souls united, two hearts exchanged, two lives for ever entangled.  We walked and rode together, he taught me drawing, came now and then and spent the long summer afternoons, and grandmother liked and welcomed him; offered no obstacle to the strong current of love that ran like a golden stream for those few hallowed weeks, and afterward found only rapids and whirlpools.  How deliriously happy I was!  What a glory seems even now to linger about every tree and rock that we visited together!  He told me he was very poor, and was encumbered with the care of an infirm mother and sister, and of a young brother who displayed great plastic skill, and gave promise of becoming renowned in sculpture, while Belmont was devoted to painting.  He frankly explained his poverty, detailed his plans, expatiated with beautiful poetic fervour upon the hopes that gilded his future, and asked my sympathy and affection.  While he was obscure he was unwilling to claim me, his love was too unselfish to transplant me from a sphere of luxury and affluence to one of pecuniary want; and he only desired that I would patiently wait until his genius won recognition.  One star-lit night, standing on the bank of the river, with the perfume of jasmines stealing over us, I put my hand in his, and pledged my heart, my life for his.  Nearly eight years have passed since then, but no shadow of regret has ever crossed my mind for the