Live! 'Twas a false, bewildering fire:
Too often love's insidious dart
Thrills the fond soul with wild desire,
But kills the heart.
A nobler love shall warm thy breast,
A brighter maiden faithful prove,
And thy ripe manhood shall be blest
In woman's love.
—Montgomery.
Emma Cavendish, with her cheeks blooming and eyes beaming with pleasure, ran out to meet her friends.
Alden and Laura Lytton, just admitted by the footman, stood within the hall.
Miss Cavendish welcomed Laura with a kiss and Alden with a cordial grasp of the hand.
"I am so delighted to see you, dear Laura; and you also, Mr. Lytton," she said, leading the way into the parlor.
"Well as I like my kind relatives at Lytton Lodge, I am very glad to get back to you, Emma, dear, and that is the truth," answered Laura, as she sank into an arm-chair and began to draw off her gloves.
Alden said nothing. He had bowed deeply in response to Miss Cavendish's words of welcome, and now he was thinking what a bright and beautiful creature she was, how full of healthful, joyous life she seemed, and wondering that he had never noticed all this before.
But he had noticed it before. When he first saw Emma Cavendish in her father's house in the city he had thought her the most heavenly vision of loveliness that had ever beamed upon mortal eyes; and he would have continued to think so had not the baleful beauty of Mary Grey glided before him and beguiled his sight and his soul.