"Will the last link that bound me to my Maida, be severed when this letter parts from me? I feel it will be so, and loiter over it. No-while

I say farewell-a last, a final farewell-her image cannot part from me.

"But though afar, but though afar,

Thou wilt be with me still,

When morning's star, and evening's star,

Gleam o'er the western hill.""

And

Mrs. St. Pierre read the letter as well as her daughter, and she wept over it, and said it was very pretty, and she was very sorry for young Greville, and hoped it would be a warning to Magdalene to be more careful in future. then she looked at the girl, and added-" Well, my child, do not let it torment you, it cannot be helped now. Walter was going out to India at all events. But I do not think he ought to

frighten you thus."

And she folded the letter and laid it on the table, saying, that after all it was-as indeed was the fact-very romantic and sentimental. "May I keep it, mama ?"

"Of course, dear, if you like; but I don't see

any good it can do you--though it is very prettily written quite poetic.

And Magdalene St. Pierre laid up the letter. And she read it again-on what occasion!

Per

I write all this in the third person; for it is awkward to relate such things of oneself. haps I may get more hardened as I go on further in my history.

CHAPTER XVIII.

I BELIEVE that the first epoch of woman's life is to her what the second epoch of man's is usually to him her heart history commences sooner, and ends sooner. The essence of life is, for her, very often drawn into a small compass, what remains afterwards may be wholesome and pleasant enough-but the aroma is gone.

Thus there was now a difference between my twin brother and myself.

The morning of our life-day had been too bright, too unshadowed to last. The shadows were coming over it now. In my brother's case thought and study seemed to have sooner brought. some of these shadows over the happy hearted lightness of earlier days.

or something acquired, And I was sorry for it.

I felt as if I wanted

In my own case I began indistinctly to feel, although even to my dual soul I would not express the feeling, that I was not quite the same I had been. I did not know whether the change was by means of something lost but a change was in me. I missed my former self. something that was gone from me; nothing external, yet something so real that when I sat on the felled tree or walked alone in the wood, I often stretched forth my hands as if to catch the soaring away bird, and cried aloud "Come back to me! come back!" crying after the young spirit that I had lost. "Silly little thing," as the Highlanders called me-how much more did I deserve the character when I acted thus than when I went to a ball with one black shoe and one blue one; and consented to dance with one partner after just refusing another.

Was it the first innocent unconsciousness of childhood that had left me? I know not even yet: but if it were so no bad spirit had entered into the place that was left empty.

I said none, and yet I recollect there was; it

was the least degree of discontent; what I had never known before, and which therefore added to the sense of heart-change which I felt without being able to define or explain. I became displeased with Walter Greville. I believed he had done me an injury by talking to me as he did, by writing to me as he did; by going away as he did.

And then-O! that filled up my portion of self-torment; there was a degree, a very small degree of no, I will not say of displeasure, but the least sense in the world of separation between me and our mother. What was it that for the first time seemed to pass between my love and her? There was something there; and ever and anon the shade took Walter's form, and seemed to stand looking at me with his eyes, and saying, "Wilt thou be mine?" and then her eyes said again "or mine, my child, or mine?"

Then came Basil, my twin soul, and our arms twined round each other, and we walked our own dear walks, and talked as the wood-children used to talk, and I forgot that something was gone from me, and I forgot that I was not the