Only a Girl: or, A Physician for the Soul.

by Wilhelmine von Hillern

He leaned over her, and whispered, "Ernestine, only love, do you now confess the third power of which I once told you?"

"Yes, yes, I confess and bow before it." She folded her hands, and her face seemed for a moment transfigured. "Oh, Spirit of Love, dwell in my heart, and teach me to be worthy of him who is so dear to me."

* * * * * *

There was a double wedding such as the town of N---- had never seen before! Möllner and Ernestine, Hilsborn and Gretchen, were married on the same day. There was a great crowd before the quiet house where Professor Möllner lived, to witness the arrival of the numerous guests who were to escort the bridal parties to church.

"That is one of the bridesmaids, but an old one," was whispered among the people as Elsa and her brother alighted from their carriage.

"And that is another, but a very little one," was added, as a stalwart young man lifted a charming brown-eyed child out of the carriage. She was dressed in white with pink ribbons, and had a huge bouquet in her hand.

"But, oh, she has only one arm!" was uttered in a tone of compassion as she passed into the house, accompanied by her companion bridesmaid, and disappeared beneath the garlands and among the flowering shrubs with which the hall was decorated.

Within, the large drawing-room was crowded with the science and respectability of N----. There had been great astonishment among the inhabitants of the place when Johannes' actual engagement to the Hartwich was announced, but all agreed that Professor Möllner always knew what he was about; and those who were invited to the wedding declared themselves delighted with the match.

Even Elsa was appeased by Möllner's request that she would act as bridesmaid. "I am glad to be his bridesmaid," she said to her sister-in-law in the morning. "It will break my heart, but I will not repine! I shall fade away like a blossom that zephyrs waft from the tree before it can become fruit. Oh, no, I do not repine,--I only share the fate of thousands of my sisters. The blossom dying the death of innocence in its virgin purity is not to be pitied--no, let pity be for him who could crush it beneath his trend in his onward path without ever dreaming of the delight that it might have given him." She did not foresee that the poetic death that she anticipated would be very long delayed, and that she would be a welcome guest in Möllner's house in future years, as "Aunt Elsa" to a throng of attentive little listeners whom she would delight with many a tale about the elves, gnomes, and wild flowers of her youth. She was dressed in character on the present occasion, in sea-green, with a wreath of cherry-blossoms in her hair; a long narrow scarf of white satin fluttered about her slender figure. "Many might be more richly clad," she thought, "but none so romantically and poetically."

Her brother was in a sad state of mind as he this morning put on the dress-coat in which he had made his first appearance a year before in the Countess Worronska's boudoir. He had just heard that the beautiful countess had been killed in a race at St. Petersburg, and his grief at the death of the woman whom he still loved was increased by the necessity of concealing it.