LITMIR.BIZ

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started, and looked up into her face, as she said this; but not a shade of embarrassment was to be seen there.

      She went on to say—"He gave it to me because I was so fond of this poor flower;" and she pointed to a sickly creeping plant, that grew out of a pot, which was placed on the window sill.

      "You would not know it again now," she continued; "but last summer it was growing against the wall in the little patch of garden we had at Bromley, and a beautiful flower it was."

      "But what had it to do with this book, more than any other flower, Alice?"

      "It is a little story, but I will tell it you if you wish it. I sprained my ankle last summer, and could not walk for many weeks. Granny or brother Walter used to drive me in my chair to the open window, to breathe the fresh air, and look at the flowers in our little garden. There was nothing else to look at there—nothing but roofs of houses and black chimneys; but up the wall, and as high as my window, grew this very plant, that looks so dead now, poor thing. Day after day I watched its flowers, though I did not know their names, till I got to see in them things that I thought nobody but me had ever noticed."

      "What things, Alice?"

      "Across, a crown of thorns, nails, and a hammer."

      "The Passion Flower!"

      "So Mr. Henry told me one day when he found me reading my new kind of book. It was like a book to me, that pretty flower; it made me think of holy things as much as a sermon ever did."

      "And Henry brought you then this book, because of the poem in it on the Passion Flower?"

      "He did, and read it to me out loud. It felt strange but pleasant to have one's own thoughts spoken out in such words as those."

      "And you brought away your Passion Flower with you?"

      "Yes, but it is dying now; and this gives me thoughts too, which I wish somebody would write about. I should like to hear them read out."

      I took up her book, and drawing a pencil from my pocket, I rapidly wrote down the following lines:—

      "O wish her not to live again,

       Thy dying passion flower,

       For better is the calm of death

       Than life's uneasy hour.

      Weep not if through her withered stern

       Is creeping dull decay;

       Weep not, If ere the sun has set,

       Thy nursling dies away.

      The blast was keen, the winter snow

       Was cold upon her breast;

       And though the sun is shining now,

       Still let thy flower rest.

      Her tale is told; her slender strength

       Has left her drooping form.

       She cannot raise her bruised head

       To face another storm.

      Then gently lay her down to die,

       Thy broken passion flower;

       And let her close her troubled life

       With one untroubled hour."

      Alice read these lines as I wrote them. When I had finished, she shook her head gently, and said,—

      "These are pretty words, and pretty thoughts too; but not my thoughts."

      "Tell me your own thoughts, Alice; I would fain hear them."

      "I can't," she said.

      "Try."

      "I think as I see the flowers die so quietly, that they should teach us to die so too. I think, when I see my poor plant give up her sweet life without complaining, that it is because she has done what she ought to do, and left nothing undone which she ought to have done. I planted her in my little garden, and she grew up to my window; she gave me buds first, and then flowers—bright smiling flowers; and when I was ill she gave me holy happy thoughts about God and Christ. And therefore I wish to do likewise—to do my duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call me; and then to die quietly, when it shall please Him, like my passion flower."

      As she was finishing these words, I was startled by the loud and angry tones of Henry and of Mrs. Tracy, who seemed to be disputing violently. They were speaking both at the same time, and his voice was quite hoarse with anger. I overheard these words:—"I tell you that if you do not command yourself, and behave as I desire you, I will never see you again, or put my foot into your house."

      A tremendous oath followed this threat, and then their voices subsided. I looked at Alice; she seemed concerned, but not surprised or agitated, at what was going on down-stairs, and merely closed the door of her room, which had been left open. A that moment, however, Henry came half-way up the stairs, and calling to me said that it was late, and that we had better be setting out again. I complied, and in coming down into the room below I was civilly greeted by Mrs. Tracy, who thanked me for my visit, and muttered something about hoping we should soon meet again. Had it not been for Alice, who had interested and charmed me to an extraordinary degree, I should have formed exactly a contrary wish, for I had never more heartily agreed with any opinion than with that which Henry had pronounced about his former nurse; and her civility was to my mind more repulsive still than her ungraciousness. I took leave of her coldly enough, but earnestly pressing Alice's hand as I mounted my horse, I whispered in her ear, "Alice, I like your poem better than mine," and rode off.

      We took a different road from that we had come by, and skirted the edge of a small lake that lies on the eastern side of the Bridman Woods. The day was altered, and dark clouds were beginning to gather over the sky; the wind was whistling among the bare branches, and Henry was unusually silent and pre-occupied. I felt depressed too, and we did not speak for some time. I was revolving in my mind what possible cause there could be for a man of Henry's character and habits entering into such a violent altercation with a person of Mrs. Tracy's age and inferior rank in life. His temper was generally good, and his manners peculiarly gentlemanlike; his conduct, therefore, (however provoking she might have been,) appeared to me unaccountable. I could not help wondering also, that he should have associated on evidently intimate terms with that lovely Alice, and yet had never mentioned her to any of us, even in casual conversation. There had not been a word, however, or a look, of his or of hers, that could, for an instant, have allowed one to suppose that there had been anything in their intercourse which either could have wished to hide. As to her, I could as soon have suspected of impurity the pearly drops that hung lightly on each twig of the hawthorn bushes that we passed, as her young life of one evil action, or her young mind of one evil thought. The deep blue waters of the little lake that lay stretched at our feet, were not more calm and more pure than her eyes; and in the marble paleness of her fair brow—in the divine purity of her child-like mouth—in the quiet innocence of her whole demeanour, there was that which seemed to speak of

      "Maiden meditation, fancy free."

      We were going at a brisk pace alongside the water, and the rapidity of our motion was an excuse for silence; but as we turned away from the lake, and began ascending a steep acclivity, which led to the moors we had yet to cross on our way home, we were forced to slacken our pace; and as we did so, I asked Henry in a half-joking manner, "Have you recovered the passion you were in just now? Your forebodings seem to have been fully realised."

      "Thanks to you," he answered in a short dry manner.

      "Come, come," I said, "do not visit upon me Mrs. Tracy's disagreeableness. Indeed I think you are not as patient with her as you ought to be, considering she is an old woman, and was your nurse. You were speaking to her with inconceivable violence."

      "You overheard what I said to her?"

      "Only a few words, and a dreadful oath."

      "I was not aware that you were listening at the door. Had I imagined that you had stationed yourself there, I should certainly have been more guarded in my expressions."

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