Strange Visitors

ion by many little attentions; sending up to the school-room, now and then, choice fruit from his hot-house, or

rowing interest, and, if they came not, to feel disappointed and unhappy. He had travelled much and could talk well, and under the influen

rother returned, and my new-born interest

formerly, against his wiles, and finally bent a too willing ear to his soft words of praise and admiratio

on its golden wings! T

And when the short clay

n, I found myself secret

rd Br

ed: this stern brother who shut himself up apart from his species, and

it," he said. "Wait till I have settled up

how he had wronged Richard. I learned to regard him as a robber, a hypocrite whose statements could not be relied on; a false, dar

off the painted wrappings of life, revealing the b

d the door that I might be free from interruption, sat down to look over the dainty

ng in the mirror their perfect adaptation to my face and figure. A long time must have passed in this way, when the hall clock struck the hour of midnight. Astonished at the lateness of the night, I threw down the laces and ribbons which I was combining into some airy

O my beauty! my wife! I have come to claim you to-night. Y

said I. "You forget it is so late.

We will stand up before God and our own hearts, and I will marry

was not prepared for this. Excitement and the strangeness

his request with a pleading force

ying my tears; "this is so sudden, so un

aled a gaping abyss,

hanged. The sweet, seductive smile vanished. He grew white as the moonbeam, an

ve the key. You have promised to be mine. You shall ke

crept over me. But I took my resolution, un

were presented to my mind with terrific reality. A deadly swoon-like feeling ensued

mbered that the same key unlocked this and the door of my apart

prospect of liberty, cooled my excited nerves,

hand upon the latch,

ething that lay near him, and tearing it to atoms, rushed by me wi

eath was shivered into fragments; its white petals, like fruit blossoms caught in an untimely bl

the door and sat there as guard, listening, with the hope which moment after moment grew fainter, that he would return an

n by the sound of excited voices and hurried movements in the room below. As these subsided a

n? Somebody was riding away; who was it? Through the

against the horizon, now streaked with pale crimson rays of dawn, r

d reeled; I grasped the window casement to ste