"No voice hath breathed upon mine ear
Thy name since last we met;
No sound disturbed the silence drear,
Where sleep entombed from year to year,
Thy memory, my regret."
In her own elegantly appointed apartment sat Florence Howard, with her journal open upon the table.
"Beneath the old roof-tree of home once more," she wrote, "to find my mother's pale face yet paler than when I left her, and a sudden tremor and nervousness betrayed on the slightest unusual sound, which is exceeding painful to witness.
"Hannah's penchant for me seems to have decreased somewhat, since father waited on Col. Malcome and asked his consent to the delay of my proposed nuptials with Rufus, till some change should occur in mother's health. Dr. Potipher thinks she will hardly survive the trying weather of the approaching spring.
"Poor, dear mother! what shall I do without her? But I may not linger long behind.
"I used to think I was very miserable, when I pined in ignorance of Edgar's love, and grew jealous of his attentions to gentle Edith Malcome; but what were those petty griefs, compared with the agony of having known the sweet possession of his heart, and lost it,—lost it, too, through my own selfish folly and weakness? Truly, there's naught so bitter as self-reproach. Heaven only knows what I have suffered since that dreadful night, when I fled from his angry, reproachful looks, and locked myself in the solitude of my chamber. And that freezing, distant recognition on the following morning! O, what a shuddering horror will ever creep over me with the memory of Franconia Notch! And Mount Washington,—which was for aye to tower above all other scenes of grandeur earth's broadest extent could afford,—a thought of it unnerves my soul with grief. What short-sighted mortals are we!