"What have I got that you would like to have? Your letters are tied up
and directed to you. Mother will give them to you, when she finds them
in my desk. I could execute my last will myself, if it were not for
giving her additional pain. I will leave everything for her to do
except this: take these letters, and when I am dead, give them to
Frank. There is not a reproach in them, and they are full of wit; but
he won't laugh, when he reads them again. Choose now, what will you
have of mine?"

"Well," I said, "give me the gold pen-holder that Redmond sent you
after he went away."

Laura rose up in her bed, and seized me by my shoulder, and shook me,
crying between her teeth, "You love him! you love him!" Then she fell
back on her pillow. "Oh, if he were here now! He went, I say, to marry
the woman he was engaged to before he saw you. He was nearly mad,
though, when he went. The night mother gave them their last party, when
you wore your black lace dress, and had pink roses in your hair,
somehow I hardly knew you that night. I was in the little parlor,
looking at the flowers on the mantelpiece, when Redmond came into the
room, and, rushing up to me, bent down and whispered, 'Did you see her
go? I shall see her no more; she is walking on the beach with Maurice.'
He sighed so loud that I felt embarrassed; for I was afraid that Harry
Lothrop, who was laughing and talking in a corner with two or three
men, would hear him; but he was not aware that they were there. I did
not know what to do, unless I ridiculed him. 'Follow them,' I said.
'Step on her flounces, and Maurice will have a chance to humiliate you
with some of his cutting, exquisite politeness.' He never answered a
word, and I would not look at him, but presently I understood that
there were tears falling. Oh, you need not look towards me with such