there's no quality of human nature which we can depend upon."

"Do not let this disappointment make you unjust, Seth," she said, pausing, with her hand upon the gate. "You have deceived yourself, and it is far better to become reconciled to the truth at once. If I have ignorantly, in any way, assisted in the deception, I beg you to pardon me."

She turned to enter the cottage, but Seth still hesitated. "Hannah," he said at last, awkwardly: "You-you won't say any thing about this ?"

She moved away from him with an instant revulsion of feeling. "What do you take me for ?" she exclaimed. "Repeat that question to yourself, and perhaps it may explain to you why your nature and mine can never approach!" Without saying good-night, she entered the house, leaving Seth to wander back to his lodgings in a very uncomfortable frame of mind.

Hannah Thurston found the lighted lamp waiting for her in the warm sitting-room; her mother was already in bed. She took off her bonnet and cloak, and seated herself in the widow's rocking-chair. Tears of humiliation stood in her eyes. "He does not deserve," she said to herself, " that I should have opened my heart before him. I wanted to be just, for I thought that love, however imperfect or mistaken, was always at least delicate and reverent. I thought the advocacy of moral truth presupposed some nobility of soul-that a nature which accepted such truth could not be entirely low and mean. I have allowed a profane eye to look upon sanctities, and the very effort I made to be true and just impresses me with a sense of self-degradation. What must I do, to reconcile my instincts with the convictions of my mind? Had I not suppressed the exhibition of my natural repugnance to that man, I should have been spared the pain of this evening-spared the shrinking shudder which I must feel whenever the memory of it returns."

Gradually her self-examination went deeper, and she con

fessed to herself that Seth's declaration of love was in itself her greatest humiliation. She had not told him the whole truth, though it had seemed to be so, when she spoke. She had not renounced the dream of her younger years. True, she had forcibly stifled it, trodden upon it with the feet of a stern resolution, hilden its ruins from sight in the remotest chamber of her heart-but now it arose again, strong in its immortal life. Oh, to think who should have wooed her under the stars, in far other words and with far other answers-the man whom every pulse of her being claimed and called upon, the man who never came! In his stead this creature, whose love seemed to leave a stain behind it-whose approach to her soul was that of an unclean footstep. Had it come to this? Was he the only man whom the withheld treasures of her heart attracted towards her? Did he, alone, suspect the splendor of passion which shone beneath the calmness and reserve of the presence she showed to the world?

It was a most bitter, most humiliating thought. With her head drooping wearily towards her breast, and her hands clasped in her lap, with unheeded tears streaming from her eyes, she sought refuge from this pain in that other pain of the imagined love that once seemed so near and lovely-lovelier now, as she saw it through the mist of a gathering despair. Thus she sat, once more the helpless captive of her dreams, while the lamp burned low and the room grew cold.

CHAPTER XII.

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

THE morning came, late and dark, with a dreary March rain, the commencement of that revolutionary anarchy in the weather, through which the despotism of Winter is overthrown, and the sweet republic of Spring established on the Earth. Even Woodbury, as he looked out on the writhing trees, the dripping roofs, and the fields of soggy, soaked snow, could not suppress a sigh of loneliness and yearning. Bute, whose disappointment, bitter though it was, failed to counteract the lulling warmth of the blankets after his ride home against the wind, and who had therefore slept soundly all night, awoke to a sense of hollowness and wretchedness which he had never experienced before. His duties about the barn attended to, and breakfast over, he returned to his bedroom to make his usual Sunday toilet. Mr. Woodbury had decided not to go to church, and Bute, therefore, had nothing but his own thoughts, or the newspapers, to entertain him through the day. Having washed his neck and breast, put on the clean shirt which Mrs. Babb took care to have ready for him, and combed his yellow locks, he took a good look at himself in the little mirror.

"I a'n't handsome, that's a fact," he thought to himself, "but nuther is she, for that matter. I've got good healthy blood in me, though, and if my face is sunburnt, it don't look like taller. I don't see why all the slab-sided, lantern-jawed, holler-breasted fellows should have no trouble o' gittin' wives, and me, of a darned sight better breed, though I do say it, to

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were sorussomed to give on a sharp rig, hasty twang to

every touch of Life, were now muffed sod deslened in tone: that was

It might have been some consolation to Bate, f he oculd have known that his presumed rival was equally unfortunate. In the case of the latter, however, there was less of the pang of tighted bopes than of the spiteft bitterness of wounded raviny, Seth Warties was accustomed to lock upon himself. and not without grounds of seljustification, as an unusual man. The son of a poor laborer, orphaned at an early age, and taken in charge by a tailor of Ptolemy, who brought him up to Lis own business, he owed his education mostly to a gick ear and a realy tongue. His brain, though shallow, was active, its propelling power being his personal conceit; but he was destitute of imagination, and hence his attempted

flights of eloquence were often hopelessly confused and illogical. The pioneer orators of Abolition and Temperance. who visited Ptolemy, found in him a willing convert, and he was quick enough to see and to secure the social consideration which he had gained in the small community of " Reformers"— an advantage which the conservative society of the village denied to him. Indeed, the abuse to which he was occasionally subjected, was in itself flattering; for only men of importance, he thought, are thus persecuted. Among his associates, it was customary to judge men by no other standard than their views on the chosen reforms, and he, of course, stood among the highest. His cant, his presumption, his want of delicacy, were all overlooked, out of regard to an advocacy of "high moral truths," which was considered to be, and doubtless was, sincere.

Let us not, therefore, judge the disappointed tailor too harshly. His weaknesses, indeed, were a part of his mental constitution, and could, under no circumstances, have been wholly cured; but it was his own fault that they had so thoroughly usurped his nature.

Whatever spiritual disturbance he might have experienced, on awaking next morning to the realities of the world, the woman who rejected him was much more deeply and painfully troubled. Years had passed since her heart had known so profound an agitation. She felt that the repose which she had only won after many struggles, had deceived herself. It was a false calm. The smooth mirror, wherein the sunshine and the stars saw themselves by turns, was only smooth so long as the south-wind failed to blow. One warm breath, coming over the hills from some far-off, unknown region, broke into fragments the steady images of her life. With a strange conflict of feeling, in which there was some joy and much humiliation, she said to herself: "I am not yet the mistress of my fate.”

She rose late, unrefreshed by her short, broken sleep, and uncheered by the dark, cold, and wet picture of the valley. It was one of those days when only a heart filled to the brim