"I see Madam Truxton occasionally. She is always engrossed, as you know, and the pressing duties to the new pupils exclude from her mind all remembrance of the old ones. Yet I love her, and always shall.
"I think I hear you asking, 'What of Emile?' and in a few brief words I can reply. I still see him occasionally, and he still professes his unchanging love for me. Forgive me, Lizzie; pardon what may seem in me a weakness, but I must confess it, I believe I love Emile. Firmly as I once promised you to shut my heart against his overtures of love, I have slowly but surely yielded my resolution, and now I can but frankly confess it. I do not think I shall ever marry him. I have told him so again and again, and I believe I shall never surrender this resolve. I have never told my father of Emile's devotion to me. I have not deemed it necessary, as I do not intend to marry him; and, then, I have been afraid to tell him. I only meet Emile by chance, and but rarely. I know you would advise me not to see him at all, and maybe I will not in the future. Nous verrons.
"Since I wrote to you last, Kitty Legare has died. She has been fading, as you know, for a long time with consumption. Dear girl, now she is at rest; and, I think, to be envied.
"But dear friend, I am drawing my letter to a tedious length. The stillness of the hour admonishes me to seek repose. So, hastily and with everlasting love, I bid you good night. "Your own "LEAH."
CHAPTER XVI.
THE days passed on, and the night before the wedding hung its cold, starless gloom over the Queen City-hung as the sable pall above the dead.
"My dear," said Mrs. Abrams, as Mark on this evening was preparing to leave his house for that of his affianced, to make the last necessary arrangements for the coming ceremony, "I wish you could be with me to-night. A mother's heart calls for the last evening of her son's free life, claims the last moments of the time when she can call him exclusively her own. To-morrow, dear boy, you are no longer mine. I shall have only a secondary claim upon your love and companionship, and must in the future console myself with the knowledge, that in losing a mother my son has gained a wife."
"O mother," replied Mark, with a troubled look, "don't speak so. I am compelled to be at Mr. Mordecai's a little while to night, and also to call at Crispin's, and see that my boot is stretched, and then I'll hasten back. Tight boots on a wedding day, mother, will not do at all, you know," added Mark playfully, as he stroked the soft hair that waved back from the oval Jewish face-a pale, gentle face it was. "I'll be back very soon."
"Brother Mark, isn't you glad my arm is so well? Mother says I may go to the synagogue, too, to-morrow, and see you married," said the innocent little sister, whose lacerated arm still hung in the snowy bandage around her neck.
"Yes, dovey, indeed I am," replied Mark, bending down beside the fair child, and tenderly caressing her. "If my little Rachel could not be there, brother Mark would not consider himself well married. I am only sorry that I haven't had a peep at that vicious dog that hurt my darling so. Never mind, I am still ready and waiting for his reappearance, and then I'll have revenge.—Good-night, dear mother, I must go; a sweet good-night to you and little Rachel-till I come back." The young man stepped out into the cold, dark night, and turned his face toward the elegant home of the Jewish banker.