wistfully, and pressed her hand on her forehead,
then said, in a strange voice, "Did I ever love
you? What do you mean?"

"Lilian, Lilian, rouse yourself; are you not,
while you speak, under some spell, some influence
which you cannot describe nor account
for?"

She paused a moment before she answered,
calmly, "No! Again I ask, what do you
mean?"

"What do I mean? Do you forget that we
are betrothed? Do you forget how often, and
how recently, our vows of affection and
constancy have been exchanged?"

"No, I do not forget; but I must have
deceived you and myself—"

"It is true, then, that you love me no
more?"

"I suppose so."

"But, oh, Lilian, is it that your heart is only
closed to me? or is it—oh, answer truthfully—
is it given to another?—to him—to him—against
whom I warned you, whom I implored you not
to receive. Tell me, at least, that your love is
not gone to Margrave—"

"To him—love to him! Oh no—no—"

"What, then, is your feeling towards
him?"

Lilian's face grew visibly paler—even in
that dim light. "I know not," she said,
almost in a whisper; "but it is—partly awe—
partly—"

"What?"

"Abhorrence!" she said, almost fiercely, and
rose to her feet, with a wild, defying start.

"If that be so," I said gently, "you would
not grieve were you never again to see
him—"

"But I shall see him again," she murmured,
in a tone of weary sadness, and sank back once
more into her chair.

"I think not," said I, "and I hope not. And
now hear me and heed me, Lilian. It is enough
for me, no matter what your feelings towards
another, to hear from yourself that the affection
you once professed for me is gone. I
release you from your troth. If folks ask why
we two henceforth separate the lives we had
agreed to join, you may say, if you please, that
you could not give your hand to a man who
had known the taint of a felon's prison, even on
a false charge. If that seems to you an
ungenerous reason, we will leave it to your mother
to find a better. Farewell! For your own sake
I can yet feel happiness—happiness to hear that
you do not love the man against whom I warn
you still more solemnly than before! Will you
not give me your hand in parting—and have I
not spoken your own wish?"

She turned away her face, and resigned her
hand to me in silence. Silently I held it in mine,
and my emotions nearly stifled me. One symptom
of regret, of reluctance, on her part, and I should
have fallen at her feet, and cried, "Do not let
us break a tie which our vows should have made
indissoluble; heed not my offers—wrung from
a tortured heart. You cannot have ceased to
love me!" But no such symptom of relenting
showed itself in her, and with a groan I left
the room.

WHAT WINE DOES FOR US.

IN a learned and able dissertation on The
Vine and its Products, by the late Dr. Arthaud,
of Bordeaux, in which the subject is treated of
under the scientific heads of "Ampelography"
and "Ænology," terms derived from the Greek
words for "the vine" and "wine," an inquiry
is instituted as to what has been the real
influence of a moderate use of wine on the
physical and moral condition of nations, and the
question asked if it be true that wine has
always proved one of the most active agents
of civilisation. Dr. Arthaud is of opinion that
this influence has been highly beneficial, and
that civilisation would be, so to speak,
"nowhere," without the assistance of the juice of
the grape. Being very much of the doctor's
way of thinking, though not disposed to agree
with him in everything he says, we propose to
show how he endeavours to demonstrate his
proposition.

Wherever the earth is not covered with ice
and eternal snows, man has always been able to
find the means of existence, and to make it out in
one way or other, by the assistance of the plants
and animals which he took away with him from
the Garden of Eden. The dog, the horse, and
corn, have followed him throughout the old
world; but the vine, a plant which only
prospers in temperate regions, abandoned him as
soon as he established himself in high latitudes.
It must, observes Dr. Arthaud, have been a cruel
aggravation of the penalty inflicted on the
posterity of Adam, thus to be obliged to separate
from the joyous plant, whose fruit was able, in
so great a degree, to mitigate the severity of
man's punishment. Before the extension of
commercial relations, when nations lived apart, it
was easy to draw the line of demarcation which
divided the people who enjoyed the privilege of
growing wine from those who were by nature
deprived of it. They formed two distinct races
of the human species: one barbarous, the
other civilised; one stationary in ignorance, the
other progressive in the search of knowledge.
In the eyes of Zoroaster, Plato, Aristotle, and
Cicero, the barbarian he was who inhabited the
regions where wine was unknown; and such, in
their day, were the Scythian, and the Sarmatian,
and the very Gaul himself, while for civilisation
they turned to the wine-producing countries of
the East.

At this distance of time it does not much
concern us to know who, amongst the many to
whom the credit has been given, first taught
mankind to drink wine. Bacchus may have
planted the vine in India, Noah in Assyria,
Osiris in Egypt, Saturn (always supposing there
was such a gentleman) in Crete, and Geryon (of
whose existence there are many doubts) in Spain;
but whoever the first wine-grower may have
been, he flourished in an eastern zone, outside