find its name "Stagnation"-and its end, corruption and decay.

And Constance? Ah, when the cup of sorrow first approaches the lips we shudder, close our eyes, take one taste, and think the worst is over. A sip here and a sip there; a drop now, and a drop bye and bye; and then God stays His hand; hiding the anguish portion from view, till rest has recruited our strength; and, then, He puts it to our lips again.

CHAPTER XV.

No-rather steel thy melting heart,
To act the martyr's sternest part,
To watch with firm, unshrinking eye,
Thy darling visions, as they die;
Till all bright hopes, and hues of day,
Have faded into twilight grey.

Pray only that thine aching heart,
From visions vain, content to part,
Strong for love's sake its woe to hide,
May cheerful wait the cross beside,
Too happy if, that dreadful day,
Thy life be given thee for a prey.

Christian Year.

"FOR the last time"-Oh, what a knell is in those words" for the last time," had come at length to the Conyngham family

in Balcombe, and to-morrow must see them beneath a stranger roof. The last visits had been paid. Constance had made a private little one, on her own account, to Mr. Barnard, and now there remained nothing but the departure. The day was too full of its own bustle, to allow sorrow much place, but when evening came with its subdued quiet, oh what a weariness came upon Constance. This last evening, it ought to be an epoch in life, she felt; and epoch enough it was, but not in the sense of a realized "last time." She wandered out into the hall, but it was full of trunks, heaped and being heaped together, while her feet only got entangled in the cord that strewed the passages; and as the sound of hammering and cording began, she wandered back again into the deserted library. She felt as distinctly as if she had been told it, that a crisis in her life was at hand, not that crisis which had already

come, but some other that was coming; something different from the pain and patience of the last two months. All the Villiers' family were still away at Rome, and they had their own trial to fill their minds in old Mr. Villiers's illness. Rome and Balcombe ! They were a great way off! but in vain Constance tried to think it was all best as it was; what good would it do to see Edgar Villiers again, while conscience told her the right would never let him be anything more to her than Edgar Villiers?

No good, of course, at all, but that was not the point; and a whole array of "bests" and "rights" at that moment were powerless to make her feel it was. So she stood there against the open window in the dismantled room, dimly conscious of a strange colloquy going on within her mind, between her past self, and her present self. Her past self that had craved excitement, yearned for action, chose sorrow rather than quiet, and

struggle rather than rest; how it looked strangely in upon her present self that had got all these things, as though it asked in mockery-" Art thou satisfied?"

She had not been called to any office of greatness; she had not been summoned to any different path from her neighbours; her election, was only the election of sorrow, and her post, to be a sentinel in the battle.

Then all her ended life flowed back upon her, that life that was closed and ended for ever; then the door was shut, and she knew there was no looking back.

But what! The great secret of life, had it still eluded her grasp? Not so-" she had found the life of her hand (even the Peace that passeth all understanding) — therefore she was not grieved."

"Miss Constance, which cloak will you wear to-morrow for the journey ?" said the lady's maid, putting her head into the room, for the last time in that capacity, as she was