“I have no hope in loving thee,
I only ask to love;
I brood upon my silent heart,
As on its nest the dove;
“But little have I been beloved—
Sad, silent, and alone;
And yet I feel, in loving thee,
The wide world is my own.
“Thine is the name I breathe to heaven—
Thy face is on my sleep;
I only ask that love like this
May pray for thee and weep.”
L. E. L.
“We know not love till those we love depart.”
L. E. L.

“Why will you sing that old-fashioned song, dear Annie, when you have so many much better suited to your voice?” expostulated Reginald de Vere, as he led the young songstress from her harp to a more retired seat. “I do not like your throwing away so much power and sweetness on a song which, of all others, I hate the most.”

“Do not say so, Reginald. You are not usually fastidious, or I would say, had that sweet melody Italian words instead of English, you would acknowledge its beauty, and feel it too.”

“Perhaps so, as it is not the melody, but the words I quarrel with—‘Home, sweet home.’ What charm has home ever had for me? Change the words, dear Annie, English or Italian, I care not, only remove all association of home, and I will learn to love it more.”

“Nay, Reginald; to banish such association would be to banish its greatest charm. One day you, too, may feel its truth.”

“Never, never!” he answered, passionately; “there is a blighting curse around me, which it were worse than folly to resist. I must toil on, lonely, and unblessed by one sweet tie of home—seeking for no love, and receiving none—isolated in a world! There are many others whose destiny is the same. Bound by the iron chain of fate, he is but a madman who would seek to break it.”

“Destiny—fate! I thought you had long ere this banished their baneful influence,” said Annie, in a tone of mild reproach.

“From your ear, my gentle friend, because I saw you loved not their expression; but not from my own heart. Yet you, too, believe all things to be pre-ordained; that not a sparrow falls to the ground unmarked. Then, why so start at me—is not our creed the same?”

“It cannot be, Reginald. I am not wise enough to know wherein the difference lies, I can only judge from effects; and when they are so opposed, I fancy the cause must be so also. I do believe that all things are ordained, but yet I am no fatalist.”

“Will you try and explain the distinction, for your words seem somewhat contradictory.”

“I fear they do,” she replied, simply; “and I am over bold to speak on this weighty subject at all. Your creed appears to me to consist in this: that before your birth, your path was laid down—your destiny fixed; that you are, in consequence, bound in chains, enclosed in walls, from which no effort of your own will can enable you to escape; that you must stand the bursting of the thunder-cloud—for you have no force or energy to seek shelter, no free will to choose—swayed by an irresistible impulse, and, consequently, not a responsible being. Such seems to me the creed of a fatalist.”

“And you are right. Now, then, for yours; less difficult, I should imagine, to explain, than that in which you have no interest.”

“I differ from you, Reginald. It is comparatively easy to define the subject of a passing thought or an hour’s study; but that which we feel, feel to our inmost soul, is not so easily clothed in words. I believe that an eye of love is ever watching over me—a guiding arm is ever round me; that nothing can happen to me, unless willed for my good by my Father in heaven; but I do not believe my lot in life marked out before I saw the light. Such a creed at once changes the law of love into a dark and iron-bound necessity, from which my whole soul revolts. Where would be the comfort of prayer in such a case—the blessedness of pouring forth one’s whole soul in the hour of affliction? for how could prayer avail us were our lot marked out?”

“And do you think prayer ever does? Do you believe that you are answered?”

“I do, indeed, dear Reginald; not always as our own will would dictate, but as a loving Father knows it best. I was not answered as my heart implored when my only parent was taken from me; but I was answered in the strength that was granted me to feel that he was happy, and God’s will kinder and better than my own. I am not here because it is my destiny, but because it is better for me than the calm and quiet life I have hitherto enjoyed.”

“Your creed is indeed that of a gentle, loving woman, Annie,” said her companion, more playfully; but he smiled not, for he knew how chillingly a smile will fall on young enthusiasm. “But it is too visionary, too ethereal, for cold-hearted man; perhaps not for some, but for me there are no such dreams. My heart was once full of hope and faith, and all things bright, and fond, and beautiful; but now crushed, blighted, trampled on, how may it dream again? but this is folly,” and with a strong effort he subdued emotion, and spoke more calmly. “Let us talk of something else. You alluded but now to your change of life, and I thought, sadly. Are you not happy?”

“I shall be in time, Reginald,” answered Annie, on whose fair sweet face a shade had flitted at her companion’s bitter words. “All are kind to me. My mother was Lord Ennerdale’s favourite niece, and he loves me for her sake, and so pets me that I cannot but love him most dearly.”

“And Lady Emily?”

“I shall learn to love as soon as she will let me. I fancy she thinks me but a simple romantic girl and I have not courage to undeceive her—that I can love and reverence other things besides poetry; but it is the change of circumstances that sometimes makes me sad. Clair Abbey is so far removed from Luscombe Cottage, that time has not yet reconciled me to the great change.”

“Time is slow in effecting changes in you, Annie; yet ere we meet again, trust me, you will have learned to love Clair Abbey, or changed it for another home as high in sounding, and yet more dear.”

“Changed it ere we meet again? What can you mean, Reginald?” said Annie, startled yet more by his tone than by his words, but she was not answered; for Reginald turned away directly he had spoken, his attention called by Lord Ennerdale; and another quadrille being formed, her hand was claimed, and she was led off almost unconsciously—so strangely was she preoccupied—to join it.

There had been nothing in the quiet yet earnest conversation of Reginald de Vere and Annie Grey to cause remark amongst the light-hearted group who were that night assembled in Lord Ennerdale’s hospitable halls. They had been intimate from childhood, and as Annie was almost a stranger to all present, and merely regarded as a simple country girl hardly emerged from childhood, no one was surprised that she should prefer Reginald’s society; though there were some young men who, attracted by the timid yet intelligent style of her beauty, half envied De Vere the privileges of intimacy which he so evidently enjoyed. Annie’s place seemed not amidst the followers of fashion; the long, rich, chesnut hair owned no law but that of nature, and flowed at will from her pale, high brow over a neck and shoulders, whose exquisite form and whiteness were displayed to advantage by the simple fashion of her plain black dress; the eye so “darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,” the fair soft cheek ever varying in colour, revealed every thought and feeling that stirred within. The world’s lesson of concealment and reserve she had not yet learned, for living in perfect retirement with a kind and judicious father, of whom she was the idol, her enthusiasm had been regulated, not chilled, and every high and poetic sentiment raised up to and purified in the only rest for such minds—the religion of the Bible and of Nature. Her life had passed in a small cottage on the banks of Windermere, diversified only by occasional visits to an old relation in Scotland; where, in fact, the first six months of her mourning had been passed. And there, had it not been for one cogent reason, she would have preferred remaining, as more congenial to her taste and feelings, than the form and grandeur which she imagined must surround the dwelling of an Earl.

Lord Ennerdale and his family had often sought to draw Sir Edward Grey from his seclusion, anxious to notice his child; but fearing to disturb Annie’s tranquil happiness by an introduction to a mode of life and pleasures which her very limited fortune must prohibit her enjoying, he had invariably declined these solicitations. Yet when Lord Ennerdale, notwithstanding his age and infirmities, made a rapid journey from London to Luscombe Cottage, purposely to soothe his dying hours by the assurance that his Annie was amply, even richly provided for, and therefore there could be no objection to her making Clair Abbey her future home, Sir Edward placed his weeping child in the arms of her aged uncle, and died with a prayer for both upon his lips.

But much as Annie loved and venerated her father, it was scarcely so much his last wish as the restlessness of her own heart, which, even while she preferred the simple mode of living at Kelmuir, yet reconciled her to a residence at Clair Abbey. She was restless because her quondam playmate and chosen friend, Reginald de Vere, was far away in his own most wretched home, with none to sing or smile him into peace, or cautiously and gently argue away his fits of morbid sensitiveness or overwhelming gloom. That Lord Ennerdale not only sympathised in the young man’s causes of depression, but loved his better qualities, admired his talents, and regretted his failings, was sufficient to excite the warm affections of his great-niece towards him. No spell is so powerful in opening the heart as sympathy, with regard to the character of those we love.

Clair Abbey’s great attraction, then, to Annie Grey was, that there she should constantly see Reginald; his concluding words, therefore, had both startled and pained her; but she vainly waited for their solution. She looked earnestly for Reginald to return to her; but he was constantly engaged in apparently earnest conversation with one or other of Lord Ennerdale’s guests. She was too guileless to believe he shunned her merely because he failed in courage to tell her more.

The evening closed at length; and passing along the corridor leading from the library to the stairs, a well-known step suddenly sounded behind her, and the voice of Reginald de Vere called her by name.

“I thought you intended to retire without even wishing me good night,” she said, playfully, her spirit rallying with his appearance. “What do you mean, sir, by such treatment? Be better behaved to-morrow, and I will be merciful, and forgive.”

“You must forgive me to-night, dearest Annie; for to-morrow will see me many miles on my road to Portsmouth, thence speedily to embark for Spain.”

“Portsmouth—Spain!” repeated the bewildered girl; and her hand so trembled, that the lamp she held dropped from it, and was instantly extinguished.

“Yes, Annie, to Spain!” he answered, struggling for calmness. “I am of age now; poor, but not so utterly dependent as I have been. My father’s house I will never enter more. You start, Annie, but do not—do not condemn me. Judge me by no reasoning but that of your own kind gentle heart. I can bear no more than that which I have borne. Boyhood must submit to a parent’s tyranny; but manhood owns no such law. You know how I would have loved my father, and how he has spurned me. Still I lingered, vainly striving to elicit one softer feeling, hoping—idiot that I was—that he would yet love me. But the dream is over! He drew the reins still tighter, and so snapped them; there is a measure to endurance even in a son. Do not weep thus, Annie,” he continued, conquering his own emotion to soothe hers, and passing his arm round her, as he had so often done in earlier years, when as a brother he had soothed her griefs and shared her joys. “I will not burden you with the final cause of my present resolution. I have neither means nor influence to tread the path to which my inmost soul aspires; and to toil for lingering years behind a merchant’s desk or tradesman’s counter my spirit will not bear. I have obtained a commission amongst the brave fellows now about to join General Mina in his gallant defence of the young queen; and with him these restless yearnings may be stilled in the activity of martial service, or the quiet of the grave. And who will mourn for me?” he continued, rapidly and bitterly; “who, in the wide world, will think of me, or shed one tear for me, save thine own sweet self? Oh, Annie, speak to me! Tell me you will think of me sometimes. I know there will be many, very many, to supply my place to you; but, oh, who will ever be to me as you have been?”

“And yet you have decided on this plan, endured more than ever, and told me not a word. Reginald, was this kind?” she said, struggling with the tears that nearly suffocated her.

“You were in grief already, Annie; how might I ask your sympathy in mine? I know it never was refused me. I know it would not be, even in your own sorrow; but oh, Annie, I felt if I waited to look on you again, I should fail in courage to leave England. Yet why should I linger? Changed as your prospects are, loved as you will be by those so much more deserving, what could I be to you?”

“Reginald!” murmured poor Annie, wholly unconscious of the nature of her own feelings, yet unable to utter another word.

“I know you will not forget me, Annie, dearest Annie, your nature is too good, too kind, too truthful for such change; but, fated as I am, how dare I ask for, hope for more than a sister’s love? Say you will sometimes think of me, love me as—as a brother, Annie, darling! and life will not be so wholly desolate.”

Her reply was almost inarticulate, and passionate words rose to Reginald’s lips, but they were not spoken. He led her to the door of her apartment without another word, wrung both her hands in his, bade “God bless her!” and was gone. Annie stood for a few minutes as if stunned; mechanically she loosed the wreath of white rosebuds from her hair, the fastening of her dress, which seemed to stifle her very breath, and then she sunk on her knees beside the bed, and the hot tears gushed forth; and long, long she wept, as that young guileless girl had never wept before.

Reginald de Vere was the youngest son of a private gentleman of moderate fortune, residing in a populous city in the north of Yorkshire. It is not necessary to dilate on feelings which Reginald’s own words but too painfully portrayed; the “iron rule” of tyranny is best described in the effect which it produces. The Calvinistic principles of the elder De Vere found no softening of their natural austerity in the acidity and moroseness of his temper; the evil had been increased by his union with a young Spaniard—lively, frivolous, and a Roman Catholic. How this marriage had ever come about, nobody succeeded in discovering. Strange unions there are, but seldom between such antipodes in character and feeling as were Mr. and Mrs. De Vere. Their large family grew up amidst all the evils of domestic dissension, and its subsequent misery—a father’s unjustifiable tyranny, and a mother’s as blamable weakness. Basil de Vere sought to instil his peculiarly stern doctrines in the minds of his children; his wife prayed, in their hearing, that they might be saved from such cold, comfortless belief; they shrunk from the one, and learned no religion from the other. To shield them from the father’s tyranny, the mother taught them deceit, lavished on them weak indulgences, which were to be forfeited if ever revealed. Ever witnessing and suffering the effects of dissension, what affection, what harmony could exist between themselves? The ill effects of this training were more discernible in some of their matured characters than in others; some pursued an honest course, as soon as their departure from their father’s house permitted the influence of their better qualities, but these were mostly dwelling in foreign lands; some had married with, some without his consent; and in his old age Basil de Vere found himself master of a deserted hearth, with none of his once blooming family beside him but one, and that one was Reginald. The weak indulgence of his mother had never softened for Reginald the tyranny of his father. She died in giving him birth, and he had to battle through his unhappy childhood alone. Shrinking almost in agony from his father’s voice, yearning, with all the clinging confidence of childhood, for love, but finding none, he turned in loathing from the continued scenes of discord which characterised his home. He spurned with contemptuous indignation offers of indulgence and concealment, to act as he saw others do, and thus constantly drew upon himself the enmity of his more wily brothers and sisters. He shrunk, in consequence, more and more within himself, striving to keep peace with his father, but in vain; for De Vere often raged at his children without knowing wherefore, and the calm, dignified bearing of his youngest son would chafe him into greater fury than palpable offence. But there were seeds of virtue, aye, of the “nobility of genius,” in the disposition of Reginald, that bloomed and flourished despite the unhealthy soil and blighting atmosphere in which he moved; perhaps the kindly notice of Sir Edward Grey assisted their development. The pale, silent, suffering boy had appealed irresistibly to his kind heart, and for Reginald’s sake he condescended to make acquaintance with his father.

As long as they remained in Yorkshire, Sir Edward permitted Reginald to share much of the instruction which he himself bestowed upon his Annie; a kindness so delicately and feelingly bestowed, that Reginald by slow degrees permitted his whole character to display itself to Sir Edward, and allowed himself to feel that, with so kind a friend and so sweet a companion, he was not utterly alone. Even when Sir Edward removed to Windermere their intercourse continued; for there was ever a room prepared and a warm welcome for Reginald, who turned to that cottage as a very Eden of peace and love.

As Reginald increased in years, felt more fully his own powers, and through Sir Edward’s friendly introductions associated with other families, his morbid feelings did not, as the baronet had fondly hoped, decrease, but rather strengthened, in the supposition that his fate alone was desolate. He saw happy homes and kindly hearts; no exertion, no effort, no sacrifice could make such his, and he believed an iron chain of fate was round him, dooming him to misery. The kindness of Sir Edward, of Lord Ennerdale, and others, only deepened the vain, wild yearnings for home affections—the peace, the confidence of home. A peculiarly fine organization of mind and an acute perception of character caused him to shrink with pain from general notice. The talented and gifted he admired at a distance, feeling intuitively that such would be his chosen friends; yet, from a sense of inferiority, refusing to come forward and permit his fine talents to be known; at the same time shrinking from the common herd, convinced that amongst them he should meet with neither sympathy nor appreciation. A happy home would have been all in all for Reginald; there the incipient stirrings of genius would have been fostered into bloom, and the morbid feelings too often their accompaniment regulated into peace.

The death of Sir Edward Grey and the future destination of his daughter were, however, the final cause of his determination to leave England. He knew it not himself; and if a light did flash upon the darkness, it only deepened the gloom around him, by the conviction that his doom was ever to love alone. More and more earnestly he sought to soften his father’s temper, even to conquer his own repugnance to the path of life his parent might assign him; but in vain. To enumerate all the petty miseries this struggle cost him would be impossible. The mind rises purified and spiritualized from great sorrows; but there is no relief from the trial of an unhappy home, no cure for the wounds of words. If domestic love and peace be ours, we can go forth with a firm heart and serene mind to meet the trials of the world; alas! alas! for those who have no such haven, no such stay!

Never did Reginald De Vere make a greater mistake than in the supposition that a military life would bring him the happiness for which his parched soul so thirsted. He could not associate the favourite pastime of his childhood, carving in wood, stone, or whatever material came first to hand, with the feverish yearning for exertion and excitement, which possessed his whole being. He could not feel that the one sprang from the other, or rather that the power which urged the former was secretly working in his mind, and causing an utter distaste for all mechanical employment. He was too unhappy to examine the source of his restlessness, and knew no one who could explain it for him.

Lord Ennerdale and his sons were all men of worth and talent, and firm encouragers of art and literature; but not themselves children of genius, they failed in the subtle penetration which could discover its embryo existence. Had Sir Edward lived he would have seen further; but still all his friends had dissuaded Reginald from entering on a military career, but he was firm; and in less than a week after his agitated parting with Annie, a fair wind was rapidly bearing him to the shores of Spain.

Days and weeks passed, and Annie Grey sought with persevering effort to regain he............