that made an everlasting murmur as it tumbled over rock and precipice on its way to the sea. Here the days of childhood and early girlhood passed away, the years succeeding one another in a poetic and uneventful manner, but leaving behind them a memory that she would cherish till the end. She wandered with her playmates along the running stream or through woods of blossoming trees. Of course, even at this time, her life was not all play, for she had to assist her mother with her daily duties, and attend to the tasks of her tutor—a lady relation of her mother.
I presumed she had a lover.
Yes! she had a lover, and one that made her existence a round of constant happiness; but an event occurred in her seventeenth year which throw an immovable cloud over the future. On one occasion, while walking along the bank of the river, which was swollen by the early summer rains, they noticed a bunch of rare blossom on a tree overhanging the stream. He said that ho would secure them for her, and this was not an unusual thing for him to do. Still, she felt a cold chill pass over her, as if some evil were impending, and became alarmed for his safety. She entreated him not to go, but he was already out on the branch,
