"Walter! Walter!" she whispered, and her quivering lips touched once the loved name which she was never heard to breathe again.
Prom that day Cora Douglass faded, and when the autumnal days were come, and the distant hills were bathed in the hazy October light, she died. But not in the noisy city, for she had asked to be taken home, and in the pleasant room where we had often sat together, she bade me her last good-by. They buried her on the Sabbath, and Walter's voice was sad and low as with Cora's coffin at his feet he preached from the words, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." His young wife, too, wept over the early dead, who had well nigh been her rival, and whose beautiful lace wore a calm, peaceful smile, as if she were at rest.
There was a will, they said; and in it Walter was generously remembered, while to his wife was given an ivory box, containing Cora's diamonds—necklace, bracelets, pin and ear-rings—all were there; and Walter, as he looked upon them, drew nearer to him his fair girl-wife, who but for these, might not, perchance, have been to him what she was—his dearest earthly treasure.
BAD SPELLING
The last notes of the bell which duly summoned to their task the pupils of Madame Duvant's fashionable seminary had ceased, and in the school-room, recently so silent, was heard the low hum of voices, interspersed occasionally with a suppressed titter from some girl more mischievous than her companions. Very complacently Madame Duvant looked over the group of young faces, mentally estimating the probable gain she should receive from each, for this was the first day of the term, then with a few low-spoken words to the row of careworn, pale- faced teachers, she smoothed down the folds of her heavy gray satin and left the room, just as a handsome traveling-carriage stopped before the door.
The new arrival proved to be a fashionably-dressed woman, who, with an air of extreme hauteur, swept into the parlor, followed by two young girls, one apparently sixteen and the other fourteen years of age. The younger and, as some would call her, the plainer looking of the two, was unmistakably a "poor relation," for her face bore the meek, patient look of a dependent, while the proud black eyes and scornfully curved lip of the other, marked her as the daughter of the lady, who, after glancing about the room and satisfying herself that the chairs, tables, and so forth, were refined, gave her name as "Mrs. Greenleaf, wife of the Hon. Mr. Greenleaf, of Herkimer county, N.Y."
"I have come," said she, apparently speaking to Madame Duvant, but looking straight at the window, "I've come to place my daughter Arabella under your charge, and if she is pleased with your discipline, she will finish her education here—graduate—though I care but little for that, except that it sounds well. She is our only child, and, of course, a thorough education in the lower English branches is not at all necessary. I wish her to be highly accomplished in French, Italian, music, drawing, painting, dancing, and, perhaps, learn something of the old poets, so as to be able to talk about them a little, if necessary, but as for the other branches, such as geography, history, arithmetic, grammar, and the like, she can learn them by herself, and it is not my wish that she should waste her time over any thing so common. These will do for Mildred," and she glanced toward the poor relation, whose eyes were bent upon the carpet.
"She is the child of my husband's sister, and we have concluded to educate her for a teacher, so I wish, you to be very thorough with her in all those stupid things which Arabella is not to study."
Madame Duvant bowed, and Mrs. Greenleaf continued, "Last term they were at Bloomington Seminary, and, if you'll believe it, the principal insisted upon putting Arabella into the spelling-class, just because she didn't chance to spell every word of her first composition correctly! I dare say it was more Mildred's fault than hers, for she acknowledged to me that 'twas one of Mildred's old pieces that she found and copied."
An angry flash of Arabella's large black eyes, and a bright red spot on Mildred's cheek, were the only emotions manifested by the young girls, and Mrs. Greenfield proceeded: "Of course, I wouldn't submit to it—my daughter spelling baker, and all that nonsense, so I took her away at once. It was my wish that Mildred should remain, but husband, who is peculiar, wouldn't hear of it, and said she should go where Arabella did, so I've brought them both."