cold breath of winter.  The gaudy hues, too, which nature had lately worn, were all faded; there was a pale, yellow-leafed vine clambering over the verdureless lilac, and far down in the garden might be seen a shrub covered with bright scarlet berries.  But the warm south wind was sweet and fragrant, as if it had strayed through bowers of roses and eglantines.  Deep-leaden and snow-white clouds blended together, floated lazily through the sky, and the sun coquetted all day with the earth, though his glance was not, for once, more than half averted, while his smile was bright and loving, as it bad been months before, when her face was fair and blooming.

But how sadly has this day passed, and how unlike is this calm, sweet evening to the one which closed that November day!  Nature is the same.  The moonbeams look as bright and silvery through the brown, naked arms of the tall oaks, and the dark evergreen forest lifts up its head to the sky, striving, but in vain, to shut out the, soft light from the little stream, whose murmurings, seem more sad and complaining than at another season of the year, perhaps because it feels how soon the icy bands of winter will stay its free course, and hush its low whisperings.  The soft breeze sighs as sadly through the vines which still wreath themselves around the window; though seemingly conscious they have ceased to adorn it, they are striving to loosen their bold, and bow themselves to the earth; and the, chirping of a cricket in the chimney is as sad and mournful as it was then.  But the low moan of the sufferer, the but half-smothered, agonized sobs of those fair girls, the deep groan which all my proud cousin’s firmness could not hush, and the words of reproach, which, though I was so guilty myself, and though I saw them so repentant, I could not withhold, are all stilled now.

Ada and Mary have just left me, and I am sitting alone in my apartment.  Not a sound reaches me but the whisperings of the wind, the murmuring of the stream, and the chirping of that solitary cricket.  The family know my heart is heavy to-night, and the voices are hushed, and the footsteps fall lightly.  Lily, dear Lily, art thou near me?

Five years and some months ago—­it was in early June—­there came to our home from far away in the sunny South, a fair young creature, a relative of ours, though we had never seen her before.  She had been motherless rather less than a year, but her father had already found another partner, and feeling that she would not so soon see the place of the dearly-loved parent filled by a stranger, she had obtained his permission to spend a few months with those who could sympathize with her in her griefs.