CHAPTER IV.

Seventy-five years have rolled by since last I met the reader, and I am still a thoughtless girl. But oh, how changed! The raven of despair has flapped his hideous brood over the halls of my ancestors, and taken from them all that once made them beautiful. When I look back I can see nothing before me, and when I look forward I can see nothing behind me. Thus it is with life. We fancy that each hour is a butterfly made to play with, and all is gall and bitterness.

I was chastened by misfortune, and occupied a secluded cavern in the city of New Orleans, when my faithful old nurse entered my dressing-room, and burst into a fit of hysterical laughter.

"Sassafrina!" I exclaimed, half angrily.

"Please don't be angry, miss," responded the tired old creature; "but I knew it would come all right at last. I told you Sir Claude Higgins hadn't married his youngest sister, but you wouldn't believe me. Now he's down stairs in the parlor waiting for you."

And the attached domestic fell dead at my feet.

After hastily putting on a pair of clean stockings and reading a chapter in my mother's family Bible, I left the room, murmuring to myself, "Be still, my throbbing heart, be still."