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John did not care for you. A little while ago, a young man, the supercargo of a vessel, was reported as lost at sea, and then it came out. She had known him when her father was poorer-when they were both children, indeed, and had loved him faithfully all her life. He was poor, and her father opposed it; but she was content to forego wealth and luxury for his sake. They were waiting till he could make enough to marry respectably. This was why she was always so cold in society. You know how she kept every one at a distance. It seems she saw his death in a paper, and it literally broke her heart. She was found with the blood flowing in a crimson tide from her mouth, and the paper clutched in her hand. In three days she was dead. They buried her yesterday. Poor, proud broken heart! Poor Anastasia St. John!"

My darling had read the letter over my shoulder. I felt her tears upon my cheek as she murmured, in her tender, pitying voice, this fragment from a ballad that she loved:

"And they called her cold. God knows.

Underneath the winter snows,

The invisible hearts of flowers grow ripe for blossoming!

And the lives that look so cold,

If their stories could be told,

Would seem cast in gentler mould—

Would seem full of Love and Spring."

Behold, I have told you the story of My Inherit-
Vale!

ance.

Number 101.

How different faces are in this

They are books in which
Others are great family

A face that had a story to tell. particular! Some of them speak not. not a line is written, save perhaps a date. Bibles, with both the Old and the New Testament written in them. Others are Mother Goose and nursery tales; others, bad tragedies or pickle-herring farces; and others, like that of the landlady's daughter at the Star, sweet love anthologies and songs of the affections.

LONGFELLOW.

NUMBER 101.

T was a head-a woman's head.

IT

The Art Union was unusually full that year, and No. 101 hung in an out-of-the-way corner. I had been there several times without noticing it, but that day my eyes chanced to rest on it, and I could not withdraw them.

The features were not entirely regular, but lofty, and with strong lines of power. The complexion was a dark, clear olive. The heavy black hair had been put back, as if impatiently, behind the ears, and was twisted in coils about the head. The expression was most remarkable. I had never seen any thing like it in a painting. There was fortitude and strong will in the lines about the mouth, and much of conscious strength and patient suffering sat on the broad forehead; but it was reserved to the eyes to tell the story. Those dark, melancholy, despairing eyes, whose glance seemed turned inward, seeking after lost joys. They were wild, they were stern, and yet they were melting with a woman's pain. Far down in their depths was a gleam of love-it must have been a mother's love, for no other could have throned itself on the desolation of such a sorrow. I looked at it silently a few moments, and then I said aloud, "Hagar." I had no catalogue, but I needed none to know to whom that face must have belonged.

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