The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 | Page 3

arm. His hands were clenched hard together.
"Yes, there's no mistake about it. But, Auntie, tell me, am I a fool and a jackass? didn't you think she liked me?"
"To be sure I did!" I answered decidedly.
"Well, she says she never thought of me,--never!--and she never thought of marrying again."
The wound wouldn't bear touching,--it was too sore. So I sat silently with him, holding his hand in mine, and looking into the fire, and in almost as great a rage as he was. He knew I felt with him, and by and by he turned to kiss my cheek, but still without a word.
How I wished he could have gone to the conflict with the thought of his true love warm at his heart? Who deserved it so much? who was so brave, so heroic, so handsome?--one in ten thousand! And here was this dead-and-alive Percy Lunt, saying she never thought! "Pah!--just as if girls don't always think! If there's anything I do detest, it's a coquette!" The last sentence I unconsciously uttered aloud.
"Don't call her that, Auntie! I really think she didn't know. I wasn't just to her. I was too angry. When I spoke to her she looked really distressed and astonished. I am sure that I ought----"
"Nonsense, Robert! she must have seen your feelings. And haven't you been sending her flowers and books and pictures, and reading to her, and talking to her the whole time, this three months! Where were her eyes? I have no patience with her, I say!"
The boy had recovered his sense of justice so much sooner than I! He smiled sadly, and took both my little old hands in his. "Best of aunties! what a good hater you are! Now, if you love me, you will be kind to her, and try to love and comfort her. Somehow she looks very unhappy."
I could not answer.
"She looked--O so sorry! Auntie, when I spoke, and as if she was too much astonished to answer me. I do think it was the very last thing in the world she expected. And after she told me, which she did at once, that I was mistaken, and she was mistaken, and that we never could be any more than friends to each other, and I had got up to go away,--for I was very angry as well as agitated,--she stood looking so pale and so earnestly at me, as if she must make me believe her. Then she held out her hands to me, and I thought she was going to speak; but she shook her head, and seemed so thoroughly distressed, that I tried to smile, and shake hands cordially, though, I confess, I didn't feel much like it. But I do now, Auntie,--and you must forgive her for not thinking quite so much of your Rob as you do."
He took a photograph from his breast-pocket, and kissed it.
"She gave me this; and she wrote on the back the date of to-day, April 16th, 1861. She said she did not want me to remember her as she is now, but as she was in her happy days. And that they could never come again."
It was a very lovely vignette, taken when she was joyous and round-faced, and with the curls falling about her cheeks and neck, instead of the prim little widow's cap she wore now. And instead of the still, self-contained, suffering look, there was great sweetness and serenity.
"I don't see why she gave it to you, Rob," said I peevishly; "the best thing you can do is to forget her, and the kindest thing she could do to you would be to cut off all hope."
"She did that," he replied; "but she said she could not bear to have me go where I was going without feeling that I had left a most affectionate friend, who would watch eagerly for my success, and sympathize with all my trials. Auntie! who knows?"
I saw by the lighting up of his dark eyes what hope lay at the very bottom of his soul. And, to be sure, who knew what might be in the future? At all events, it made him more comfortable now to have this little, unexpressed, crouching hope, where he could silently caress it when he was far away from us all. He had all our photographs,--mother, sister, and aunt.
"And now I must go to Mr. Ford's to-night, and bid them good by. Don't let any enterprising young lawyer come here and get away all my business before the month is out. I came within an ace of making a writ only last week!"
So with smiles he parted from me, and strength was given me to smile too, the next morning, when he marched by my window, and bowed to me, at the head of