the greatest kindness towards her would be to help her overcome this needless shrinking from recurrence to an event which was not worth a painful thought, and which had long since lost every painful association. He gathered some lilies, of which a few yet remained, and presented them to her the day before Walter's return. Notwithstanding an effort to appear grateful for them an expression of pain flitted over her features.
"Rosalind," said Ernest in a serious tone, "why should those lilies, or any reminiscence of last summer's experience cause you or me an unpleasant sensation? Do you think you are alone in needlessly disturbing your own peace by a thoughtless act? If so, he who now stands before you can relate a personal experience as much more painful than yours as it is more impossible to retrieve an error with the dead than with the living."
Startled from her motionless attitude, the lilies dropped from her hands upon the table, and she gave him a look of surprise, saying, "You, Ernest?"
"Yes. I had a mother once, as kind, as devoted as yours, and I loved her as intensely as a child could love a parent, which she returned by treating me as a companion, rather than as a son over whom she might exercise a parent's control. Our lives in this matter very much resembled yours here, and perhaps my youth was as blameless as Walter's. My mother's health was always delicate, though never such as to excite alarm. I never left her until I went to college. I know now the struggle it must have cost her to part with me, but I did not realize it then. As full
