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"The girl I left behind me is fairer than them all!"

For in Montreal he had left Aurelia Darnel de St. Eustache, whom we shall meet in time. A kind of half-flirtation—something even more tender and taking had subsisted between them, and but for his sudden summons home, it would have assumed greater proportions and had a firmer basis; he would have explained to her the nature and extent of his love for her, and obtained some pledge or promise from her, with the consent of her mother, for father she had none now; and when Elspat Gorm spoke apprehensively of the 5th of August, as being "the fatal day of the Ruthvens," he would think, with a smile,

"I hope not, as it was on the evening of that day, I first met Aurelia at our ball in Montreal! Would that I could tell the poor old man who is passing away, of my love, and gain his permission to address her; for she must know of my love for her and will await my return; but I would that he could see her, even as I in memory see her now!"

And before him came a mental vision of a very beautiful girl, whose dark hair and long black lashes contrasted with the pale delicacy of her skin, her pencilled eyebrows rather straight than arched, a calm loveliness in her face when, in repose, but a brightness over it all, when she was animated, when her soft eyes lighted up and her lips became tremulous.