ETHEL CHURCHILL.
CHAPTER I.
THE SEASON.
And yet it is a wasted heart:
It is a wasted mind
That seeks not in the inner world
Its happiness to find;
For happiness is like the bird
That broods above its nest,
And finds beneath its folded wings,
Life's dearest, and its best.
A little space is all that hope
Or love can ever take;
The wider that the circle spreads,
The sooner it will break.
Another season had recently commenced its round of gayety; the present was outwardly as glad as if there had been no past; the sunshine played over the onward current of ex-
