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ness of her extremities, and her simple kindheartedness. She was dressed in white muslin, with ribands of precisely the colour of her eyes. Tom could not help being pleased at having her beside him. She was not difficult to entertain, for she was willing to be interested in anything; and while Tom was telling her a story about a young lad in his class at the Sunday-school, whom he had gone to see at his wretched home, those sweet eyes filled with tears, and Mr. Stopper saw it, and choked in his glass of sherry. Tom saw it, too, and would have been more overcome thereby, had it not been for reasons.

Charles Wither, on the opposite side of the table, was neglecting his own lady for the one at his other elbow, who was Jane Boxall-a fine, regular-featured, dark-skinned young woman. They were watched with stolen glances of some anxiety from both ends of the table, for neither father nor mother cared much about Charles Wither, although the former was too kind to omit inviting him to his house occasionally.

After the ladies retired, the talk was about

politics, the money-market, and other subjects quite uninteresting to Tom, who, as I have already said, was at this period of his history a reader of Byron, and had therefore little sympathy with human pursuits except they took some abnormal form-such as piracy, atheism, or the like—in the person of one endowed with splendid faculties and gifts in general. So he stole away from the table, and joined the ladies some time before the others rose from their wine; not, however, before he had himself drunk more than his gravity of demeanour was quite sufficient to ballast. He found Mary turning over some music, and as he drew near he saw her laying aside, in its turn, Byron's song, "She walks in beauty."

"Oh! do you sing that song, Miss Mary?" he asked with empressement.

"I have sung it several times," she answered; "but I am afraid I cannot sing it well enough to please you. Are you fond of the song?"

"I only know the words of it, and should so

much like to hear you sing it. I never heard it

sung. Do, Miss Mary."

"You will be indulgent, then?”

"I shall have no chance of exercising that virtue, I know. There."

He put the music on the piano as he spoke, and Mary, adjusting her white skirts and her white shoulders, began to sing the song with taste, and, what was more, with simplicity. Her voice was very pleasant to the ears of Thomas, warbling one of the songs of the man whom, against his conscience, he could not help regarding as the greatest he knew. So much moved was he, that the signs of his emotion would have been plainly seen had not the rest of the company, while listening more or less to the song, been employing their eyes at the same time with Jane's portfolio of drawings. All the time he had his eyes upon her white shoulder: stooping to turn the last leaf from behind her, he kissed it lightly. At the same moment the door opened, and Mr. Stopper entered. Mary ceased singing, and rose with a face of crimson and the

timidest, slightest glance at Tom, whose face flushed up in response.

It was a foolish action, possibly repented almost as soon as done. Certainly for the rest of the evening Thomas sought no opportunity of again approaching Mary. I do not doubt it was with some feeling of relief that he heard his father say it was time for them to be going home.

None of the parents would have been displeased had they seen the little passage between the young people. Neither was Mary offended at what had occurred. While she sat singing, she knew that the face bending over her was one of the handsomest-a face rather long and pale, of almost pure Greek outline, with a high forehead, and dark eyes with a yet darker fringe. Nor although the reader must see that Tom had nothing yet that could be called character, was his face therefore devoid of expression; for he had plenty of feeling, and that will sometimes shine out the more from the very absence of a characteristic meaning in the countenance. Hence, when Mary felt the kiss, and glanced at

Had

the face whence it had fallen, she read more in the face than there was in it to read, and the touch of his lips went deeper than her white shoulder. They were both young, and as yet mere electric jars charged with emotions. they both continued such as they were now, there could have been no story to tell about them ; none such, at least, as I should care to tell. They belonged to the common class of mortals who, although they are weaving a history are not aware of it, and in whom the process goes on so slowly that the eye of the artist can find in them no substance sufficient to be woven into a human creation in tale or poem. How dull that life looks to him, with its ambitions, its love-making, its dinners, its sermons, its tailor's bills, its weariness over all-without end or goal save that towards which it is driven purposeless! Not till a hope is born such that its fulfilment depends upon the will of him who cherishes it, does a man begin to

develop the stuff out of

which a tale can be wrought.

For then he

begins to have a story of his own—it may be for

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