the spacious grounds of Collingwood, trips over the grassy lawn, dances up the stairs, and fills the once gloomy old place with a world of melody and sunlight.  Edith knows that she is beautiful! old Rachel has told her so a thousand times, while Victor, the admiring valet, tells her so every day, taking to himself no little credit for having taught her, as he thinks, something of Parisian manners.  Many are the conversations she holds with him in his mother tongue, for she has learned to speak that language with a fluency and readiness which astonished her teachers and sometimes astonished herself.  It did not seem difficult to her, but rather like an old friend, and Marie at first was written on every page of Ollendorff.  But Marie has faded now almost entirely from her mind, as have those other mysterious memories which used to haunt her so.  Nothing but the hair hidden in the chest binds her to the past, and at this she often looks, wondering where the head it once adorned is lying, whether in the noisy city or on some grassy hillside where the wild flowers she loves best are growing, and the birds whose songs she tries to imitate, pause sometimes to warble a requiem for the dead.  Those tresses are beautiful, but not so beautiful as Edith’s.  Her blue-black hair is thicker, glossier, more abundant than in her childhood, and is worn in heavy braids or bands around her head, adding greatly to her regal style of beauty.  Edith has a pardonable pride in her satin hair, and as she stands before the mirror she steals an occasional glance at her crowning glory, which is this afternoon arranged with far more care than usual; not for any particular reason, but because she had a fancy that it should be so.

They were going to visit Grassy Spring, a handsome country seat, whose grounds lay contiguous to those of Collingwood, and whose walls were in winter plainly discernible from the windows of the upper rooms.  It had recently been purchased and fitted up somewhat after the style of Collingwood, and its owner was expected to take possession in a few days.  Edith’s heart always beat faster when she heard his name, for Arthur St. Claire was one of the links of the past which still lingered in the remembrance.  She had never seen him since they parted in Albany, and after his leaving college she lost sight of him entirely.  Latterly, however, she had heard from Grace, who knew but little more of him than herself, that he was coming into their very neighborhood; that at he had purchased Grassy Spring, and was to keep a kind of bachelor’s hall inasmuch as he had no wife, nor yet a prospect of any.  So much Edith knew and no more.  She did not dare to speak of Nina, for remembering her solemn promise, she had never breathed that name to any living being.  But the picture in the glass, as she ever termed it, was not forgotten, and the deep interest she felt in Grassy Spring was owing, in a great measure, to the fact that Nina was in her mind intimately associated with the place.  Sooner or later she should meet her there, she was sure; should see those golden curls again, and look into those soft blue eyes, whose peculiar expression she remembered as if it were but yesterday since they first met her view.