So I left her to grieve for a faithless lover,
And to hide her heart from the cold world’s sight
As women do hide them, the wide earth over.
My God! was it Grace that I saw to-night?
I thought of her married, and often, with pity,
A poor man’s wife in some dull place.
And now to know she is here in the city,
Under the gaslight, and with that face!
Yet I knew it at once, in spite of the daubing
Of paint and powder, and she knew me;
She drew a quick breath that was almost sobbing,
And shrank in the shade so I should not see.
There was hell in her eyes! She was worn and jaded;
Her soul is at war with the life she has led.
As I looked on that face so strangely faded,
I wonder God did not strike me dead.
While I have been happy and gay and jolly,
Received by the very best people in town,
That girl whom I led in the way to folly
Has gone on recklessly down and down.
———
Two o’clock, and no sleep has found me.
That face I saw in the street-lamp’s light
Peers everywhere out from the shadows around me—
I know how a murderer feels to-night!
DICK’S FAMILY.
When Dick, the little deformed invalid, hobbled from his bed into his chair-lounge at the window, where he reclined all day long, he saw a rosy-cheeked young woman polishing the windows across the street.
His pale face tinged with a sudden glow, and his painfully brilliant eyes shone with an increased lustre.