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CHAPTER III.

"Peasants must weep,

And kings endure ;

That is a fate none can cure;
Yet Spring doeth all she can, I trow:
She brings the bright hours,

She weaves the sweet flowers,
She dresseth her bowers,
For all below!"

BARRY CORNWALL.

THERE was still another, whose young heart, like Yolande's, leaped up to the felicity which youth and health, in the possession of all home comforts, is meant to taste in the sweet

spring-time; and this was the heiress of The Cedars-the gentle and Christian Junie. But to her it was no novelty to hail the renewed year with feelings of joy and thankfulness. From her childhood it had been considered the happiest period of a happy existence; and with all its increase of duties, came the excitement and busy hours of one, who had been brought up in the belief that the life of a woman is designed to be one of activity in forwarding all the matters connected with the happiness, health, and comfort of all within the circle of her influence.

The accession of an immense fortune, had not driven this aspiration from her; and still her bees, her flowers, her poultry, and all such light responsibilities of country life, were legislated for as assiduously as if no housekeeper or steward could have arranged them for her. And whether making violet-sirup,

with the flowers picked by her own hands, or administering, from her large store of preserves, to the ailments of those around, it was all done with the earnestness of one impressed with the utility and propriety of all she did. Each passing year seemed to give a quicker sense of this duty, and to show her instinctive realisation of the principle enforced by the poet

"Rise, aspire

Unto the calms and magnanimities-
The lofty uses and the noble ends-
The sactified devotion, and full worth,
To which thou art elect."

It was strange that the affection of Junie for Colonel St. Colmo, crushed back as it had been on the heart where it had sprung so spontaneously into existence, had not interfered with the peace and holy happiness of her life. This immunity from the

pains natural to interrupted affection only be referred to the discipline to which all unruly feelings are subjected by the power of religion.

The unhappiness in which unprosperous love so often indulges would have been too nearly allied to repining, to be suffered by one who saw clearly the hand of God in every concernment of her life; and, so seeing, dared not mourn for aught which that hand withheld. But, besides this resignation of the being to the Divine will, there is, in the moderation of the passions which it effects, further proof of the blessed influence of that religion which, with the commands it utters, provides for their fulfilment.

There might still be another reason urged for the calm patience with which the impediments to the smooth course of her true

love were endured by Miss Mavesyn. She had read no work of passion in which the tossing billows of a crossed love are made the one long interest of the tale. She had listened to no confidence of love-stricken girls, who, casting aside all the jewels of life, will pour into the listening ear all the sickly anguish of a heart which yearns for the only bauble withheld from them. Neither had she stirred the pure fount of her affections by giving utterance to their emotions; and though, with Miss Morant, who was still her frequent visitor, she had scarcely a concealment, yet, at the very height of artless and confidential talk, she never touched on the sacred subject of her engaged love. And this was not merely because Colonel St. Colmo had urged her secresy; it was the delicate impulse of the woman, which egotism or the love of gossip had not destroyed.