"But Bella loves him, nurse—what then?"

"My dear, she thinks she loves him, there
isn't a doubt, but I have seen mistakes made
before now."

We said no more at that time, but I recollect
going to bed very unhappy, and dreaming
restlessly, with nightmare oppressiveness, of Mr.
Joachim, who seemed a kind of grim, gloomy
phantom, formless and indescribable, but always
overshadowing Bella with a black, mysterious
mantle, whenever she was going to smile or
speak to me.

About this time a surprising thing occurred.
Never, since we had all had the measles together,
in our childhood, had my father come up-stairs
into our nursery; but, one day, he presented
himself at the door, and entered, for the purpose of
giving us a piece of intelligence. The intelligence,
unexpected as it was, hardly surprised us so much
as my father's appearance in the nursery. It was,
however, to the effect that our Aunt Dorothea
(the only aunt we had), of whom we had heard
from time to time from Nurse Parket, and
very occasionally from my father, as living in
Italy with her invalid husband, was to be
expected at Coombe Uplands in the course of a
week. She had returned to England, having
lost her husband, and my father had asked her
to come and take up her residence with us, at
what used to be, when they were boy and girl
together, her old home.

Long before he got through all this, my
father began to look dreamy and abstracted, as
was his wont, and to give it out in short half
sentences, with absent pauses between. A
world of expectation arose among us on hearing
this news. We knew very few people besides
the clergyman and his wife, and Mr. Joachim,
and the idea of having our unknown aunt to live
with us caused quite an excitement in our
minds.

Mr. Joachim had not been over to our house
for a week or two, when one afternoon, two or
three days before Aunt Dorothea was expected,
looking out from the window of the nursery
where Lucy and I were sitting, I saw him walking
with Bella about the lawn and shrubberies.
They seemed so strange a pair—she, in her
frank youth and freshness, and he in his stiff,
dull middle-age, with not a grace to relieve the
gloom and secrecy which pervaded his whole face
and figure, that I could but look at them, wondering
what might be the end of such a betrothal.
It was a late, autumn day. There were so many
trees about Coombe Uplands that it fell dusk
there sooner than in many other places, and, at
little more than five o'clock, I could not see to
do another sprig of the fancy work on which I
was engaged. Lucy still stood straining her
eyes over the volume of poems in the declining
light at the window, when Bella, with a
springless step quite unlike her own, wearily
entered the room.

I could hardly see her face except in its
general outline, but something in the turn of her
head, and in the whole air of her figure as she
drooped into a low seat by the fire, told me that
her mood was very sad. Lucy, closing her book
regretfully, came and seated herself on the
hearth-rug by Bella's side. Presently, as if she
too instinctively perceived that something was
amiss, she laid her head against Bella's lap and
drew one of her passive arms about her neck,
trying, unobtrusively, to soothe her with love and
fondness. I, the eldest, sat on a corner of the
couch next the fire on the opposite side, and
thought what a quiet sisterly group they made,
as the fire-light glanced and flickered on their
graceful figures, now showing Bella's grave pale
face in its sad reflective aspect, now lighting up
Lucy's pretty head of golden curls—she
inherited our mother's style and beauty—that fell
around her neck about which Bella's arm was
twining. We had lived lonely and retired enough,
it is true, but we had seldom sighed for pleasures
beyond our quiet country life, among the
woods and fields of Coombe Uplands, and, bound
with the chain of our sisterly love, we had been
very happy. " Can she leave us," I thought,
looking at Bella, " for that dark, gloomy Mr.
Joachim?"

As I was thinking about him, and Bella in
connexion with him, Nurse Parket entered,
and I made her come and sit down with me
upon the couch. The quiet, Nurse Parket, and
our sisterly companionship in the dear old
nursery, led me into thoughts of the past days
of our childhood, when, in the same place, at
such an hour, we had sat by the uncertain
firelight listening to nurse's stories, and I felt an
irrepressible desire to revive them once more as
far as, in the nature of things, they could be
revived.

"Nurse, dear," I said, " you used to tell us
stories when we were children. We are all very
quiet—tell us one now."

"My dear Miss Alice," she said, laughing,
"you wouldn't care for Cinderella, nor Goody
Two Shoes, now, and what else should I have
to tell you?"

"Oh, I don't know," I answered, " but something,
I'm sure. You have lived in different
places before you came here, and you must have
some grown-up stories to tell if you only think.
By the way," I said, suddenly, " nurse, dear,
had you ever a sweetheart?"

Nurse Parket smiled, and then looked grave,
and passed her hand across her face as she
answered,

"Yes, miss, once—but he died long before
you were born, my dear. I don't think I could
tell you any story about that. He died before
your dear mamma was married."

She paused, and, thinking for a few minutes,
said, looking over at Bella, who still sat quiet
with Lucy's head against her lap,

"I think I'll try to tell you a story, my dears,
about somethin' that happened once, but which
you none of you ever heard, when I was almost
a young woman. But you must excuse my way
of tellin' it, and listen to it only because it is
true."

We were all fond of stories, especially Lucy;
and Bella, rousing herself from her meditative