his God and owed no man anything, and with such a troop of little chubby children as those circling round her?

But I am speaking of a time ten years after she had come to England.

281

CHAPTER XIX.

CHE SARÀ, SARÀ.

'In love, the heavens themselves do guide the state.

Shakespeare.

THE holiday of the prisoners of the school

room came at last.

Harry Newton had been

prevailed upon to come for it, solely because the little prisoners asked it, and obtained an accession of liberty thereby, and not for any personal interest in either bride or bridegroom, whom he declared he had never seen. in his life. Alice, who had no very distinct ideas of times and seasons, asserted that Rosa had been with them in Germany, and that Mr. Newton must have seen her there, but as those German days were never much talked of, no further explanation was given, and Newton pictured to himself a bride with a broad German face, and primitive, not to say, picturesque dress.

The wedding had been fixed in Dick's

holidays at Dick's special request; for Dick, though one of poor Frank's children, as the rest were generally designated, was held in greater favour than the others, and his wishes were regarded. There was no reason for the preference, beyond the fact that he was the only one like his father, and being old enough for school, was not sufficiently at home to disarrange the comforts of the house. The very sense of being popular made him so, and there were a thousand little officious acts done for Grandmamma and Uncle Tom, which Alice and even Ernie and Gerty would have liked to do, but which from them would have been met with surprise. But Alice was always happy under the shadow of her brother Dick.

The wedding day was a good deal looked forward to by all. Weeks before, the children had been counting the days to it, and when the last day came, and, as Gerty said, only one more sleeping time before it, she and her little brother were only anxious to go to bed and get the night over.

Rosa herself looked rather grave as the time drew near; she had still kept that

auburn lock of hair in her box, and she had a sort of misgiving now that she must throw it away, before she could marry John. Time had softened the hate in her heart, and she remembered the love more than anything else. She opened her box to take out the little relic, once so sacred-was it not sacred still? Why should she throw it away? Was not her heart large enough for memories, though John was to have all her love? She put the hair back again into its hiding place ; but if John had seen her at that minute, he might have doubted whether he had quite all the love of his little bride.

Yet she was very fond of him; he was strong, and brave, and manly, a thing to lean upon, and Rosa was feeble, and tender, and clinging, and leant upon him. Still sometimes when she thought of Heinrich, it seemed to her in some way like the fulfilment of her love for him, and not its substitute. I think, even at that moment, had she known

that Heinrich had come home from his service, and had returned to the Mill, and had found Marie Dreuser already married to his rival, I think she would even then have broken her troth with John, and gone back across the water to her old love. But it was not ordained that she should know it, and so she was John Brown's little bride one bright morning in the beginning of August.

A pretty little bride too she made, as she walked to church through the grounds of Stanley Hall that bright August morning. John had not interfered with her dress, though he thought black silk a little dull for such a festive occasion; but Rosa told him it would be serviceable afterwards, and that in Germany it was always worn at such times. So she went to church in black silk, with a little white bonnet, and Harry Newton, who was standing at the porch as she came in, started at the apparition, as if he had seen something supernatural.

• What is it?' said Tom Stanley.