l.r Radies floral ikifiinvi and factorial Home Companion. 
Winnie laughed gaily. “ I love you, little one, 
and I am constant. What 1 hold to once I hold to 
always. That is a Halcourt trait. But come out 
into the orchard ; the sun is shining gloriously, and 
we will bring a rug to lie on under the trees.” 
It was a charming day, and the two girls ran lightly 
down stairs, and out into the orchard. The view 
from the old hall door was one of exquisite beauty. 
The house stood in the centre of a wide sweep of 
green hills, with forest roads winding up to the 
Halcourt mines, and scattered clearings and isolated 
farm-houses patching their sides. A clear, beauti¬ 
ful lake was nestled at the foot of the sljpe 
crowned by the gray old Hall, with a ragged, 
picturesque hamlet grouped at its lower end, from 
which rose the tall chimneys of furnaces and smelting 
works. It was also a pastoral country, with rich 
meadows and deeply shaded orchards. The world, 
that day, seemed full of grass and leaves, and birds, 
and white clouds. 
The lawn and drives, and flower gardens and 
shrubberies of Halcourt Hall, had fallen into a sadly 
neglected and unkempt state, for the old judge had 
long since ceased to employ gardeners, and carried on 
the work of his farms with as few laborers as possible. 
He had emptied the greenhouses of the rare plants 
that filled it in the time of the famous Halcourt who 
had been minister to France, aud had turned it into a 
tool shop; and the stables aud out-buildings were 
rotting down and falling to pieces. But the flue, 
solid old granite dwelling was well suited to the land¬ 
scape it seemed to dignify and rule over, and could he 
seen for many miles. 
Virginie clapped her hands as she saw the cloud 
shadows sweeping over the green heights, like great 
flaunting banners. “ 0, how I love the hills,” sho 
exclaimed. 
these are hut pigmies compared with your 
“ Bat 
Alps.” 
“ They are 
“ I should die 
plains, where 
far better than none,” said Virginie, 
of homesickness on those vast western 
they say there is no hill so large as a 
grave.” 
The girls had reached the orchard, and spread their 
rug beneath a shady apple tree, where the sun spotted 
the ground, aud bees were humming in the thick 
boughs. Virginie in her light dress 1 >oked like a 
white bird with a golden head, but Winnio always 
wore dark, positive colors, and to-day she had adorned 
herself with a crimson sash, and pinned on a breast- 
knot of the same. 
“What have you brought, Virginia?” 
“A volume of Beranger, and a little gown to sew for 
that poor miner’s baby up in the hill. I cut it out of 
one of my old ones.” 
“Oh, y >u little sister of charity!” exclaimed Winnie, | 
“ I am afraid the miner's babies would all go naked if 
I had to make gowns for them.” She stretched her- i 
self out upon the rug, her face turned toward the sky, 
her lithe limbs easily composed and her long arms 
twined above her head. 
“ I am going to watch you sew, and just he lazy,” 
she continued. “There is immense capacity for idle- [ 
ness in me. I am like a race-horse that is capable of 
mighty efforts during moments, but must have long 
intervals of rest and high-feeding. I hate that kind of 
goody missionary work that you delight in, Winnie, j 
and I believe I hate sewing, and all sorts of useful \ 
things ; but when I have money, perhaps I can build 
better houses for the miners to live in, up on the j 
mountains, and I will do something to help Mike 
Piaster, the fisherman down at the lake. He is not a j 
had sort of a fellow, though he does take too much 
liquor now and then.” 
“ It may be long before you can do all that,” said 
Virginie, as she plied her needle meditatively. 
“ Of course I don’t want any one to die,” said Win¬ 
nie, almost sharply; “I am not thinking of that. 
But when I come of age I shall have money of my 
own, the fortune that would have gone to my uncle, 
Bradley Halcourt’s father, if my grandfather had not 
willed it to me. When one is young and full of life 
and spirits,” she added, with her voice softening, “ it is 
natural to dream dreams.” 
“Not love dreams.” 
“ No, Mousie, hut dreams of what one will do with 
one’s life—how one will manage to set some of the 
crooked tilings of this world straight, and gratify one’s 
secret wishes and desires.” 
Virginie’s eyelids trembled, and a faint rose color 
dyed her pure cheek. After a moment’s pause, she 
asked, in a loud voice, “ is it not settled that you are 
to marry your cousin, Bradley ?” 
“Oh, I suppose so; Bradley will do as well as 
another. He will let me go my own way, and we 
shall be mutually civil and obliging; but the property 
will be settled upon me.” 
Virginie gave her an almost startled glance from 
under her long, silky lashes. 
“ I see you are shocked, Mousie,” said Winnie, 
laughing good naturedly, and showing her beautiful 
white teeth ; “ hut there are family reasons why Brad¬ 
ley and I should marry. His father, my mother’s half 
brother, was wronged in some way out of his share of 
the property. He must have quarrelled with grand¬ 
papa Halcourt, and I was preordained to set matters 
right. Mamina stipulated that if she had a daughter 
she should marry her half brother’s son, and papa has 
never objected, though he does not think too highly of 
Bradley’s tastes and habits. You see the Halcourts 
were the grand people of this part of the country. 
The old minister to France built the Hall not long 
after the Revolution, and he brought hack the goblin 
tapestry that hangs in the musty old drawing-room, 
and the fine brocaded furniture that is all dropping to 
pieces, aud that picture of Murillo’s Annunciation that 
is covered by the red velvet curtain. Bradley goes 
into ecstacies over the dark old thing, but I bow 
nothing about art. Our ancestor lived in great state, 
and there were plenty of slaves on the land in those 
days. That was before slavery had been abolished in 
these middle States. Old Nanna’s mother was a slave, 
and Nanna has staid- on account of her loyalty to 
mamma, Miss Susan, the baby she toted when she 
was little. Papa lias not paid her anything for years, 
hut she lives in some way on the hoardings of the 
past; and when the money is mine, I will pension her 
off, and Steeuie’s future shall he provided for. There 
were sunshiny days in the old minister’s lime, and ] 
will bring them back, for the land is worth more than 
it was then, and I have heard that the mines would 
yield largely if properly developed. There are many 
farms that papa lets well, and ho has money in bank, 
and stocks, and mortgages, and bonds, and railway 
shares, and a block of houses in the city.” 
“Did monsieur belong to a great family?” Winnie 
asked, demurely stitching away, the sun flecking her 
bright hair. 
“Oh, papa,” said Winnie, plaiting same bits of 
grass together, “belonged to no family in particular, 
lie was what they call ill America a self-made man. 
Ho obtained his own education, and, after many strug¬ 
gles, was acknowledged one of the first lawyers in the 
country. He was made a judge, and then he married 
mamma. It was fortunate for me, for if Halcourts 
had continued to intermarry with Halcourts, as they 
did formerly, I should have been a niuny, and I ought 
to be grateful to papa for giving me one parent whose 
intellect I can respect. How shocked you look, 
Mousie. Y r ou see I am obliged to tell you everything. 
I become as clear as glass when we are together.” 
“I never thought of my parents in that way,” said 
Virginie, with a scarcely perceptible shrinking away 
from the arm that Winnie held up to encircle her 
waist. 
“ Of course you never did, Mousie. You were not 
brought up as I have been. But why should I be 
hypocritical? Papa has taught me nearly everything 
I know. He freed me from superstition, and gave me 
the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and 
evil to eat. When I was a little thing, I could not 
help seeing that he had a contempt for my mother’s 
weakness and spirit of intrigue. 1 know you think 1 
am a strange creature, irreverent, and-almost wanting 
in natural affections; but I do love the truth. Papa 
always ridiculed mamma’s religion, for the Halcouits 
were not papists before her time. He would even 
dress up and say a mock mass, to make me laugh.” 
“ But is it not better than no religion ?” Virginie 
asked, with an intensity of emotion Winnie had never 
before heard in that gentle voice. “If madam goes 
wrong, is she not seeking the right path in her feeble¬ 
ness and ignorance, and is she not longing for divine 
aid and comfort, for the support of a heavenly father 
and friend ? Can you not pity madam ?” 
Winnie was for a moment cowed, and her eyes 
shrank away from Virginie’s candid glance, now quite 
fearless and searching. Her self-confidence took flight 
for a moment, and then with a little petulent half sigh, 
she said: “We ought not to pity our parents, Vir- 
! gkiie, we ought to love them. But tell me about 
yours. I am sure your childhood must, have been like 
: a poem.” 
“ Ob, there is so little to tell,” said the other, letting 
her work drop into her lap and clasping her hands to¬ 
gether. It is like one of those happy, common-place 
stoiies, with nothing to relate until death comes—it is 
all so simple, so lmmhle,' ,so obscure. My father, 
Ernst Duval, was a poor music master in Geneva. 
■ He played the organ in one of the parish churches 
theie, and in his spare hours he taught classes, and 
wrote beautiful ehaunts and interludes which he sold 
to the music dealers for a, more pittance. One sum¬ 
mer, when his chest had failed, the physician sent him 
to some small German baths. It was there he met 
my mother, who was an English governess, an orphan 
hound to the service of rich and vulgar people, who 
made her life miserable. It was pity, and then love 
| that woke in my poor father’s heart. Before that time, 
music had been his only mistress. But when they 
married, love was never wanting in our humble little 
.1 ome, though bread sometimes was scanty. My 
mother shared my father’s enthusiasm for music; 
she was always his pupil and dear sympathizer. 1 do 
t ot now remember when 1 first learned to speak Eng¬ 
lish, for it was always heard in our home. Four 
little mouths came to be fed, and at times there was 
much hardship and poverty, hut affection made it light, 
rud more than all, trust, in the dear God who helps 
through every trial. My three brothers died one by 
one, and I was leit to receive all the tenderness and 
rare of those loving hearts. In the summer we went 
to the high mountains and lived in the chalet of a 
herdsman, on black bread and goats’ milk. In the 
still blue weather, we could hear avalanches sliding 
down the sharp slopes many miles away, and then 
we sat in the high green pastures among the cows 
and young calves, and the chamois hunters were far 
over our heads, where the sky seemed to dazzle black 
against purple and white peaks. Then my father 
would take out l.is flute, and play the simple Swiss 
melodies he loved, while my mother sewed garments 
for the poor people, or taught me to draw.” ' 
Virginie paused a n omont with her head drooping, 
and unconsciously heaved a long, deep sigh. 
“And about that English uncle of yours, Virginie, 
the one you lost,” said Winnie. 
“ Oh, yes ; he was my mother’s only brother, and he 
had been wild in his youth, and had gone away to 
America, and for many years was quite lost sight of. 
And then the very year before that dreadful last sum- 
I mer, there came a letter to my mother from a very 
! remote part, somewhere in the far West. It had been 
forwarded to her from her old home in England, and 
was from my uncle Walter Freeborn ; and my poor 
dear mother rejoiced over him as if he had been raised 
from the dead. He fold her that for years he had led 
a roaming life, hut at last he had settled in one of the 
v'ild territories ; that he owned rich mining lands, and 
1 oped 1o secure a fortune. He did not even know that 
1 is parents were dead, or that she had married away 
from England. But his own wife and child had died, 
and 1 e longed to hear from the old home he had 
abandoned. 
“ That 
Winnie. 
“ Oh, no, via cliere ; my mother wrote, and several 
letters came. That was the year we went to an un- 
1 ealthy valley, where the fever broke out among the 
herdsmen’s huts in August, and my father nursed the 
peasants, and fell ill and dkd in the little house where 
we were staying. Oh, that, dreadful time!” Virginie 
put up her hands, md clasped li<r head. “I cannot 
think cf it; my brain reels, and all memories run into 
a confused blur. Then my mother took the fever, and 
was buried three weeks later. I do not know what 
happened; I lost count of the days. Our kind old 
pastor from Geneva came np to me, and performed 
the last sad rites over my mother’s form. 1 was 
strangely dull, and could not feel or weep at all ; and 
when he took me home with him, and showed me 
the little house where we had lived, I came to life with 
a long shuddering cry, and then I too fell ill, and was 
close to death for many days. They were not kind, 
they would not let me die ; and after a time I began 
to gain strength, and to remember and weep.” 
[To be continued.'] 
was not the last you heard?” put in 
