Isabel sunk back in deep thought. "No,"
she whispered, "my mother first of all—
before you."

He let her hand fall from his. "Choose
then," he said coldly.

She clung to him; weeping now and
broken. He pressed her to his heart. He
believed that he had conquered.

"Choose," he again whispered. "If you
have not chosen already;" and he kissed her
tenderly.

"Oh, Charles! you know how dearly I love
you."

At that moment her mother's cough struck
her ear. The windows were open, and it
sounded fearfully distinct in the still summer
air. Isabel shuddered, and hid her face on
her lover's shoulder, resting it there for many
minutes.

"I have chosen," she then said, after a long
long pause. She lifted her head and looked
him in the eyes. Although pale as a marble
statue, but quiet and resolved, she never
looked so lovely, never so loveworthy. There
was something about her very beauty that
awed her lover, and something in the very
holiness of her nature that humbled and
subdued him,—only for a moment; that
passed, and all his man's eagerness and
strength of will returned, and he would have
given his life to destroy the very virtues
he reverenced.

He besought her by every tender word
love ever framed, to listen to him and to
follow him. He painted scenes of such
desolation and of such abject misery without
her, that Isabel wept. He spoke of his
death as certain, and asked how she would
feel when she heard of his dying of a
broken heart in Jamaica, and how could she
be happy again when she had that on her
conscience? And although she besought him
to spare her, and once was nearly fainting in
his arms from excessive emotion, yet he
would not; heaping up her pile of woes
high and still higher, and telling her throughout
all, "that she did not love him now."

After a fearful scene the girl tore herself
away; rushing as if for refuge from a tempting
angel, and from herself, into her mother's
room; busying herself about that sick bed
with even greater care and tenderness than
usual.

"You have been a long time away, Isabel,"
Mrs. Gray said petulantly.

"Yes: I am very sorry, dearest mamma.
I have been detained." Isabel kissed her
withered hand.

"Detained—you don't deny it, Isabel."

"I am very sorry."

Tears trembled in her mother's eyes as she
murmured, "Sorry!—Don't stay with me,
child, if you wish to go. I am accustomed
to be alone."

"I entreat you not to think that I wish
to leave you for a moment,"

"Oh yes, you do, Isabel! I dare say Charles
is below stairs—he seems to be always here
since I have been ill. You have a, great deal
to say to him, I am sure."

"'I have said all I had to say," answered
Isabel quietly.

She was sitting in the shadow of the
window curtains; and, as she spoke, she bent
her head lower over her work. Her mother
did not see the tears which poured down fast
from her eyes.

"Oh, then it was Charles who kept you! I
can easily understand, my love, the burden I
must be to you. I am sure you are very
good not to wish me dead—perhaps you do
wish me dead, often—I am in your way,
Isabel. If I had died, you would have been
happily manned by this time; for you would
not have worn mourning very long, perhaps.
Why have I been left so long to be a burden
to my family?"

All this, broken up by the terrible cough
and by sobs and tears, Isabel had to bear and
to soothe away, when she herself was tortured
with real grief.

Charles departed for Jamaica. The thick
shadow of absence fell between their two
hearts. Henceforth she must live on duty
and forget love; now almost hopeless. A
stern decree this for a girl of nineteen.

For the youth himself, the excitement of
the voyage, the novelty of his strange mode of
life, and the distractions of business, were all
so many healing elements which soon restored
peace to his wounded heart. Not that he was
disloyal, or forgetful of his love, but he was
annoyed and angry. He thought that Isabel
might have easily left her mother to go with
him, and that she was very wrong not to
have done so. Between the excitement of
new scenes and new amusements, and the
excitement of anger and disappointment,
Charles Houghton recovered his serenity, and
flourished mightily on Jamaica hospitality.

By the end of that year the invalid grew
daily weaker and weaker. She could not
leave her bed, now; and then she could not
sit up even; and soon she lay without motion
or colour—and then, on the first day of spring,
she died. She died on the very same day
that Charles Houghton entered the house of
the rich French planter, Girard, and was
presented to his heiress, Pauline.

Pauline Girard! a small, dark, gleaming
gem—a flitting humming-bird—a floating
flower—a firefly through the night—a rainbow
through the storm—all that exists in nature
most aërial, bright and beautiful; these
Charles compared her to and a great deal
more; that is—when they first met. Charles,
with his great Saxon heart, fell in love with
her at first sight. It was not love such as he
had felt for Isabel. It struck him like a
swift disease. It was not the quiet, settled,
brother-like affection which had left him
nothing to regret and little to desire; but
it was a wild fierce fever that preyed on his