22 THE SNOW DROP. 



She then burst into tears, and told me that her 

 passion for flowers was as great as even mine : 

 that it was Erederick's daily task, when in India, 

 to go out every morning and cull the most splendid 

 blossoms of that glowing clime, which he always 

 arranged in her boudoir, and upon her beloved 

 piano, with as much care as he bestowed on his 

 military duties. The long voyage had separated 

 her from the world of flowers during his illness : 

 and when, after leaving him in the depths of 

 ocean, she first beheld those smiling remem- 

 brances, such a horror took possession of her poor 

 lacerated mind, that, as she solemnly assured me, 

 she would rather have taken the most noisome 

 reptile into her hand than a rose. Voluntarily, 

 she never entered a garden ; because of the al- 

 most unconquerable desire that she felt to trample 

 every flower into the earth. She had struggled 

 and prayed against this : it was a species of de- 

 lirium over which time seemed to have no power ; 

 and it was to avoid a task so torturing that she had 

 engaged my attention for hours, in the hope of 

 my forgetting it until after her departure. ' When 

 I kneeled down before the chair,' said the sweet 

 mourner, ; I prayed that the sense of all your love 

 toward me might prevail over my dreadful reluct- 

 ance ; and it did.' Then, after a pause she added, 

 with another burst of tears, ' I don't think I could 

 have done it, if you had not loved Frederick f> 



