it is so like you. I do hope that your son is not badly wounded. How happy he will be to have you come and nurse him. I do hope that if Leonard should be wounded at all severely, if you should have a little time to spare, you would think of him.”

"Oh indeed I would," said Mrs. Childers; "indeed I would."

"There is another thing," said Jessy, after a minute's silence, "which I did want to say," and she buried her face in her hands, and seemed undergoing some strong emotion, "ah well, it is very foolish," and as she spoke she caught up a letter from the table and examined the post mark.

"You see, Mrs. Childers, it is this. I have not had a letter. Oh such a very long time it seems; it is much longer than usual; he might be wounded or ill, but I know he is not that, because," and here her voice faltered" because you know-Cicely did have a letter from him last week, and-and-I, I, you know -have not heard for nine days." And she gazed vacantly on the letter and paused.

The widow, with all her punctilious and old fashioned manner, knew many lessons of the human heart, and in a moment read the woe that was working there. With the deepest kindness in her voice, she said, "Dear Miss Seymour, you know so many things might happen by way of accident to letters."

"Oh yes, yes!" said Jessy, pressing her hand against her forehead. "Oh how wicked I am! I know how dearly Leonard loves me, and yet, and yet—but oh, who ever read a letter like this ?" and she took from

her bosom one which had been treasured there, and looked upon its already worn surface with an eye more than moist. But it did not escape the widow's observation, nor perhaps yours, good reader, to wonder, or perhaps not to wonder, why the letter which she took from her bosom was evidently of an older date than the one that lay upon the table. It was one in fact over whose melting sentences of love, soon after Leonard had left her, she had wept and smiled, and meditated by the passing hour. And though she did not know it as a formed thought, poor girl, the later letters had a little faded off into something she knew not what"for of course he would tell me about the landing, and the Cossacks, and the splendid look of the men, and the Alma, and the heroes of the 23rd, what was more natural ?" Still what cared Jessy for all the battles, and all the heroes?

As she read the glowing stories, her eye would anticipate the coming sentence on the bottom of the page, to see whether there were those words coming presently, which in that tenant of her warm breast had come so often, "My own, my precious Jessy." Yet no, they did not come; "and yet, you know," she said, as she turned to the widow, as if finishing a sentence, though she had begun it only in her own mind, "and yet, you know, oh Leonard does so love me !"

Ay, Jessy Seymour, if you fully felt that, you would not say it. Words ever come to swell the lagging sail of windless feeling. They come to fill the vacuum, the husk of love.

But the widow rose to go, and Jessy again was

alone. She had given utterance to something which she felt she had never owned before. But the burdened heart must drop its load somewhere in life's brief journey. And if, gentle reader, participating in the widow's thought, as she walked home along the lane and said to herself, "Ah, it's a pity the young soldier is more taken up now with the battle than with love; but it is the way of men, and especially with youth," I say, reader, if that is your conviction, and if leaving the widow you turn and look through that little window at the parsonage, and see Jessy still sitting after a long half hour in the same place gazing with those speaking eyes upon the same worn letter, and then restore it to her bosom as one would some frightened bird, whose affection we long to make our own by rescuing it from destruction; if seeing that and hearing her gentle sigh as she did it, you shall be inclined to blame Leonard Loraine,—stay a moment. Remember he was after all a youth with a youth's fleeting transient feelings, drawing the honeyed drops of life's excitement from a hundred glittering flowers; one to whom the blossom on which he first rested may be a little paled in power by those which have so rapidly succeeded it. While she was one whose clinging soul once having rested on the flower of its early choice knew no change; and would cling there till each pale petal dropped and died; and then would sepulchre herself in their dust.

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CHAPTER XIII.

THE DINNER PARTY.

"My dear," said Mrs. Loraine to her husband, one morning not very long after the news of the battle of Inkermann had reached England, "I think we ought not to neglect the calls of hospitality. There are several persons whom we ought to ask to dinner."

"I have no objection, my dear," said Mr. Loraine. "I am not quite sure what every one might think. I have heard some people express an opinion that during a state of war like the present, which involves the deaths of so many of our countrymen, the usual attentions of that kind should be suspended."

"My dear papa," said Cicely, laying down her pen on the table, and with her head bent forward looking at her parents, “ my dear papa, what can such people mean? where can the harm possibly be of social intercourse, merely because an army is engaged in honourable war? It does seem to me

"

My dear Cicely," said her father, "I see no sort of objection to your mother's proposal," and he sank back with his usual air of indifferentism into his armchair, and took up the Quarterly and a paperknife; for there was nothing he dreaded equal to a discussion with Cicely. He cleared his throat, and was soon deep in an article, though he looked for a moment over the top of his book at his wife, and said, "Pray, my dear, make any arrangements you please, I shall only be too happy ;

all I bargain for is that you ask the Hibberts, and that you do not ask Mr. Tavistock.”

"My dear papa," said Cicely, laying down her pen again, "it is quite impossible to do otherwise than to ask him, because

"

"Very well, my dear, anything your mother likes," said Mr. Loraine sinking again into his article, and frowning with a dissatisfied air; and again clearing his throat he was soon only a matter of consciousness to his two companions by the fringe of his iron grey hair and whiskers which surrounded the edges of the magazine, and his feet which were stretched on the rug.

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'Cicely, my love, will you make a list of the names of those we should ask?" said Mrs. Loraine, rising and standing on the rug.

"Delighted, dear mamma," said Cicely, taking up her pen and paper with energy.

"Sir John and Lady Hibbert; Mr. and Mrs. George Brown; Lady Burgoyne; Mr. and Mrs. Tattler, Miss Tattler, and Miss Emily Tattler; Mr. and Mrs. Bathurst, the Rector of the next parish; Miss Peggs, and Mr. Philpot; and, of course, dear Mr. Seymour and Jessy; though, I suppose, Jessy will not come," said Mrs. Loraine, looking out of the window.

"Dear mamma, why not?" said Cicely. "It is such a pity that Jessy gives way to these weak feelings." "Here, you old humbug," cried Maxwell, bursting into the room, "there's one of your beastly old women wants you in the hall," said he going up to Cicely and laying his hand with no soft touch upon her shoulder.