MARRIED OR SINGLE?

CHAPTER I.

The Old Green Trunk.

"Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks,.

Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet
With tears that trickled down the writer's cheeks
Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,

Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains,
Or nymphs responsive."-CoWPER.

Two sisters were sitting, one evening, in a small private library, adjoining their sleeping apartment, in their stepmother's house, in a fashionable quarter of New York. It matters not in what year, for though this their history makes great pretension to veritableness, it pays no respect whatever to chronology. The youngest-the youngest of course takes precedence in our society-was not past eighteen, and, grown to her full stature, rather above the usual height,-Grace Herbert differing in most of the faculties, qualities, and circumstances of her being from the average of her sex. To a strictly classical eye she was too thin for her height, but of such exact proportions, so flexible and graceful, that the defect was insignificant. Her features were of the noble cast. Her complexion was neither fair nor brown, but exquisitely smooth and soft. Ordinarily she was pale, and her large dark eye lacked lustre; but a flash from her mind, a gust of passion, or even a gentle throb of affection, would brighten her cheek, light her eye, play over her lips, and even seem to radiate from the waving tresses of her dark hair. In that there was a notable peculiarity. It was dark, and yet so brilliant in certain lights, that in her

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little court of school-girl friends, where she was queen (by prescriptive right), it was a standing dispute whether its colour were golden, auburn, or brown. But it was not form or colour that so much distinguished Grace Herbert, as a certain magnanimity in the expression of her face, figure, and movement.

Her sister Eleanor was some three years older, and many years wiser, in the opinion of their friends, in Grace's, in all the world's, save Eleanor's herself. She was of the medium stature, a little too full, perhaps, for our fashion's spare ideal, but not for perfect health and loveliness. Her complexion was of the firmest texture. Not blonde that might intimate change and early decay, but fair and blooming as Hebe's. Her mouth-that cannot be described by lines and colours; her uncle Walter said to her that very evening, when she gave him her good-night kiss, "Take care, dear Nelly, that the bees don't light on your lips for their honey!" Eleanor's eye was hazel, not brilliant, nor marked in form or setting; and yet such an eye, so steady, so clear, could only look out from serene memories, from religious aims, moderate expectations, and attainable hopes,—from a heart of gentle and healthy affections. And there was such a holy calm on her brow, that, if the rest of her face had been veiled, one might have divined its whole expression. A celestial seal was set there, with the inscription, "Though thou pass through the waters, they shall not overwhelm thee, and through the fires, they shall not consume thee."

She was sitting on a cushion beside an open, timestained morocco trunk, heavy with brass bands and nails, and filled with files of old letters, while Grace sat by a table with a book of Flaxman's outlines before her, and sheets of drawing-paper, some bearing fair copies of her exquisite models, and others from her own ideals, scarcely less graceful.

Is there anything sadder than files of old family letters, where one seems to spell backward one's own future! The frail fabric of paper is still firm, while the strong hand that poured out upon it the heart's throbs of love, of hate, of hope or of despair, is mouldering in the grave. Letters filled with anxieties, blessed perhaps in their