cold, silent, and repellant. Rose was struggling with two contending feelings; her straightforward ingenuousness made her shrink from the idea of concealing from one of her own sex, who thus sought her acquaintance, her real history. She shrank from a friendship based on deception.

Simple, straightforward Rose! as if half the friendships in the world would not snap in twain, placed on any other basis! If each heart, with its disingenuous trickeries, its selfish purposes and aims, were laid bare to its neighbor, if the real motives for seeming kindness, the inner life, whose pure outward seeming is often in direct inversion to the hidden corruption were as transparent to the human as to the Omniscient eye, who could stand the test ?

A few interviews with Gertrude served to dispel, in a great measure, these feelings. Her ready tact, and quick, womanly sympathies, served to bridge over the chasm to Rose's naturally trusting heart.

Oh, that parting with the life-boat of faith-that unsettled, drifting, sinking, weary feeling-that turning away even from the substance, for fear of the mocking shadow-that heart-isolation which makes a desert of the green earth, with all its fragrance, and music, and sunshine-who that has known misfortune has not deplored it? Who has not striven in vain to get anchored back again where never a ripple of distrust might disturb his peace,

"Tell me how you like it," said Gertrude, placing Charley's finished picture in the most favorable light. "Now don't say you are no connoisseur, that is only a polite way of declining to give an unfavorable opinion. Find all the fault you can with it; you at least should know if it is true to life.”

"It is perfect," said Rose, delightedly; "it is Charley's own self; he is a pretty boy," said the proud mother, looking alternately from him to the picture.

"You must remember," said Gertrude, "that of all the different expressions of a loved face, which the heart has daguerreotyped, the artist can catch but one, and that one may not always be to friends the favorite expression; hence you see, with all our good intentions, the craft sometimes labor to disadvantage. However, I seldom paint portraits; my forte is still life;' so, of course," she added, laughing; "your mercurial little Charley was quite out of my orbit, but thanks to flowers and lump-sugar, I think I may say there is his double."

"A mother's eye sees no flaw in it,” said Rose.

"Thank you," said Gertrude, with a gratified smile. "It has already found a purchaser. A gentleman who was in my studio this morning thought it a fancy sketch, and would not believe me when I told him that there was a beautiful living type; he offered me a sum for it that would at one time have made my heart leap; I can afford to refuse it now."

"How early did your artistic talent develop itself?” asked Rose.

"I was always fond of pictures," replied Gertrude ; "but the 'talent' which prosperity 'folded in a napkin,' the rough hand of adversity shook out."

"Adversity?" repeated the astonished Rose, looking at Gertrude's sunny face.

"You are skeptical," said Gertrude. "I forgive you, but I have learned not to wear my heart dangling like a lady's chatelaine at my girdle, to be plucked at by every idle, curious, or malicious hand.

"Listen!" And she drew her chair nearer to Rose.

10*

CHAPTER XXXIX.

GERTRUDE'S STORY.

"WHEN I was about fifteen, I lost both my parents with an epidemic, which raged in the neighborhood. Up to that time, I had known poverty and sorrow only through an occasional novel, which fell in my way. My dear father, whose silver head I never can think of without involuntarily and reverentially bowing my own, had made my child-life one dream of delight. I felt free to think aloud in his presence. I feared no monastic severity at my childish blunders, or indiscretions; he was my friend, my play-fellow, as well as my teacher and guardian.

"I had an only brother, who had imbibed an unconquerable passion for travel and adventure, and the only mistake my father ever made educationally, was shutting him off from any mention of the subject. He thought himself right in this, and meant it kindly; but it resulted in my brother's secretly leaving home in disguise for a foreign port; he has never since been heard from, and was probably lost at sea.

"Upon the death of my parents there was found nothing left for my support, and I was left to the care

of a distant relative. It was an unexpected and unwelcome legacy, for Mrs. Bluff had five children of her own, and though in comfortable circumstances, desired no addition to her family. The knowledge of this added poignancy to the grief which already burdened my heart. Upon entering this new life, I made many awkward attempts, with my city-bred fingers, to propitiate Mrs. Bluff on such occasions as baking-days, cleaning-days, washing-days, and ironing-days. Mrs. Bluff's daughters were as round as pumpkins, and as flaunting as sun-flowers; could spin and weave, and quilt, and bake, and brew, and had the reputation of driving the best bargain at the village store, of any customer for miles round; they pushed me this way and that, laughed at my small, baby hands and pale face, wondered where I had been brought up that I never saw a churn; 'swapped off' my dear books, my only comforts, unknown to me, to a traveling peddler for some bright-red ribbon, and voted me on all occasions a most useless piece of furniture. As for Mr. Bluff, provided his horses, hens, cows, pigs, and chickens, fulfilled their barn-yard destiny, and Squire Tompkins's rabbits did not girdle his young trees, and his mug of cider was ready for his cobwebbed throat as soon as his oxen's horns were seen turning down the lane, the world might turn round or stand still.

"Every effort I made to conciliate the Bluffs, or to