Love me, sweet, with all thou art, Feeling, thinking, seeing, Love me in the lightest part, Love me in full being. Love me with thine open youth, In its frank surrender; With its silence tender. Through all hopes that keep us brave, Farther off or nigher, Love me for the house and grave, And for something higher. Thus, if thou wilt prove me, dear, I will love thee-half a year As a man is able. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. HOW ONE WOMAN CAME TO MARRY. HE early summer morning is rising clear and THE bright, but chill, and yet, before these pages meet the reader's eye, over all will lie the midsummer pomp, and flush, and pride. I can think of no fitter emblem for one I knew in other days than this reluctant summer, cold, and still, and coy at first, only to burst forth, by-and-by, into more wonderful and tropical luxuriance of bloom. In Hortense Greenwich there was, from her very childhood, though few knew it then, very much of pride, but never any littleness of vanity. She had been born to an assured position in society, for she was the only child of wealthy parents, moving in the upper circles of New York. Her mother, still young and very beautiful at the birth of this one child, was a woman of fashion. Dinner parties, balls, and morning visits filled up her life, so that she had no time to become acquainted with her daughter. She gave the little one a French governess, and left her to grow up as best she could. Even the governess had a lover in America, besides an extensive correspondence with certain old friends in la belle France, and, in her turn, neglected her duties. Perhaps, however, this very neglect developed the child's soul more healthfully than a greater amount of attention from those two sources would have done. She learned readily all that was taught her, and much that was not. Acquisition of ideas was a passion with her, and her father's library, fashionably well filled and fashionably little used, was a perpetual delight to her dawning intellect. She might, perhaps, have been a beautiful child had due pains been taken in the cultivation of her natural graces. As it was, she was in no way remarkable. She was allowed to braid her hair closely back from her large, thoughtful brow; to sit carelessly, and to wear, ordinarily, what suited her best—a quiet robe of dark, shadowy, unbecoming gray. On state occasions, when her presence was required in the parlor, and she was bedizened in brighter hues and fashionable finery, she was too much embarrassed by the unusual costume to have it contribute at all to her beauty. Circumstances early schooled her to content herself with no great amount of affection. Her father would have loved her, but what with early and late devotion to the business that maintained his splendid house and faultless equipage—to say nothing of bills at Stewart's and Madame D'Arblay's—he had very little time for the cultivation of home ties. Her mother-she must have had a mother's heart somewhere in her bosom, though its beatings were effectually smothered by silk and velvet-was too much absorbed in her beautiful self to remember the child, except with an occasional fear lest her growing up should be an unwelcome reminder of her own age. The governess understood this sentiment, and needed not to be told to keep the girl back as much as possible. As for Mademoiselle, she wrote her letters and chatted with her lover, con soling herself with the reflection that in neglecting her charge she was but following the example of the higher powers. And so Hortense Greenwich brought herself up. At twenty she was little changed from what she had been at ten. It is true, some years before, Mademoiselle had married her American lover, and Miss Greenwich, deprived of her supervision, had been sent to a boarding-school, where she had learned a little French, a little Italian, and a good deal of music. At twenty she was introduced into society. She was not at all showy; indeed, her mother pronounced her, "after all that had been done for her, decidedly wanting in style," and, I think, was secretly rejoiced that her daughter was so little likely to dispute with her the palm of fashionable admiration. At twenty Hortense Greenwich might easily have passed for fifteen. So little of passion or emotion had swept over the calm surface of her life, that her face was still placid and reticent as in childhood. It had no story to tell. Her only accomplishment was her music, and this with her was rather a passion than an art. She practiced it solely for her own gratification. Hour after hour, at her harp or her piano, she breathed out her very soul-all the mystery of her inner life -in thrilling, passionate improvisations. It was to her instead of father and mother love-instead of brothers and sisters-instead of friends. She had been in society two years when she first met Rowland Chivers. Though only four years older than herself, he was already blasé. He had traveled in the Old World. He was well read in the book of beauty. He could tell a woman's fine points at a |