AN UPPER CANADIAN HOUSEHOLD.
The breakfast-room of Pine Towers, on a bright, sunny morning, some three or four days after the death of its much-respected mistress, held a large concourse of the notables of York, and other private and official gentry of the Province. They had come to take part, on the previous day, in the funeral obsequies; and were now, after a night's rest and bountiful morning repast, about to return to the Capital. Among the number gathered to pay respect to the deceased lady's memory, as well as to show their regard and sympathy for the bereaved husband, the good old Commodore, were many whose names were "household words" in the early days of Upper Canada. Sixty years have passed over the Province since the notable gathering, and all who were then present have paid the debt of nature. Hushed now as are their voices, the Macleod breakfast-room, on the morning we have indicated, was a perfect babel of noise. The solemn pageant of the previous day, and the sacred griefs of those whom the grim Enemy had made desolate, seemed at the moment to have been forgotten by the departing throng; and for a time the young master of Pine Towers, as he bade adieu to his father's guests, witnessed a scene in sharp contrast to yesterday's orderly decorum. It was with a sigh of relief that Edward Macleod saw the last of the miscellaneous vehicles move off, and the final guest take the road to the bateaux on the lake, to convey him and those who were returning by water to Holland Landing, there to find the means of reaching the Capital.
Entering the house, empty now of all but those who were left of its usual inmates, including his sister's friend, the beautiful Helene—whom he had hardly had an opportunity to more than greet on his return from England—an overpowering sense of desolation fell upon him. Seating himself near his mother's favourite window, the young man's loneliness and bereavement found vent in tears. All the past came vividly before him—a mother's life-long devotion and tender care; her thousand winning ways and loving endearments; her pride in his future career and prospects; and the recollection of the many innocent confidences which a mother loves to pour into the ear of a handsome, grown-up son, whose filial affection and chivalrous devotion assure her that she still possesses charms to which her husband and his contemporaries of a previous generation had been wont sedulously to pay tribute. "Ah, beautiful mother, it is not to-day nor to-morrow that I shall fully realize that I am to see thee no more on earth," said the young man musingly, as he left his seat and strode nervously up and down the room, while his favourite hound from a rug by the large open fire-place eyed his agitated movements.
Presently the young man's soliloquies were interrupted by the timid entrance of his sister, Rose, followed by the more decided and stately tread of the charming Helene.
"Ah, Edward," said his sister, "you are alone. Have all our guests gone?"
"Yes," was the reply, "and I am not sorry to have the house again to ourselves."
"You, of course, include Helene among the latter," observed Rose interrogatively.
"I do, certainly," was Edward's instant and cordial response, as he offered Helene his hand to conduct her down the steps into the conservatory and out on to the lawn. "Miss DeBerczy, of course, is one of us, though you told me this morning that she, too, expressed a wish to be gone."
Helene interrupted these remarks with the explanation that her wish to take leave was owing to a mandate of her mother's which had reached her that morning.
"We shall all be sorry at your leaving us so soon," was Edward's courteous rejoinder. "But, when you go," he added, "you must permit me to accompany you to 'Bellevue,' for I wish to pay my respects to your mamma; it is a long time now since we met. Besides, I have to deliver to her the cameos I brought her from England and the family trinkets your uncle entrusted to my care."