"It was an evening bright and still
As ever blushed on wave or bower,
Smiling from heaven, as if nought ill
Could happen in so sweet an hour."
Six weeks passed away without bringing any consolation to Rosalind. She had not seen Ernest, nor heard anything of him since that eventful morning. There could be no doubt then that she had banished him forever from her presence, and perhaps also broken the friendship existing between him and Walter, the thought of which alone oppressed her. There was just as much reason to fear that the bond of affection between herself and her father would be dissolved as the link that bound together those two loving souls.
There is a peculiar sacredness in the term friendship, a something essentially holy in its character which belongs to no other human love. Family ties have their own particular sancity, and the marriage relation, its omnipotent, heaven-inspiring, all-embracing love; but friendship, independent of family ties, recognizing no external bond of union,—the spontaneous out-gushing of kindred spirits towards each other, breathes in an atmosphere peculiarly its own.
Rosalind had often dwelt in thought upon the beautiful intimacy that had sprung up between Ernest
