he burst into tears. By this time many servants had gathered round the sorrowing girl, and clinging to Bertoldo who undertook to guide her, she was conducted to the Lady Clara.

The latter was much altered, and the excessive brilliancy of her haughty countenance. betrayed the addition of other tints besides the bloom Nature had bestowed. She listened with a pained expression to the detail of Ludovic's sickness, but seemed to expect merely to be called upon to visit him, not understanding that he was dead; and muttered rather sharply, gazing on Lisa's dishevelled hair and disordered dress, "Signor Ludovic might have chosen a fitter messenger methinks, and a fitter time. To-morrow I could have attended to your request."

"Oh! my lady," interrupted the sobbing girl, "he had no one to send but me; and for the time-God chose it, and not he there is no to-morrow, signora, for him, and for you, no trouble but to take this crystal vase!" Lady Clara trembled from head to foot. "What! is he dead? -Oh! Ludovic, forgive me-forgive me!" and as she spoke, she raised her imploring eyes to Heaven, and sank senseless on the ground.

66

May thy spirit now rest in peace!" murmured Lisa, as she stole back to the cottage to watch by the dead; while she who had been his idol, stifled back tears and sighs, and struggled through her evening's vanity, a slave to the world's caprices and the will of others. Years have waned and withered since then; but many a time in such hours of empty triumph and unrepaid exertion, broken snatches of song such as floated over the Arno, sound in

the Lady Clara's ears, and she recalls the day of her Italian fête, when he who loved her better than life lay dying within hearing of their false and hollow merriment, unable even to obtain a last farewell.

On such an evening, I have heard one of her high-born and noble friends remark to another, "How very dull Lady Seyton is to-night;" and the other has replied, "Yes, she is most tiresomely unequal in spirits-journaliere in the extreme."

THE MONTH OF MAY.

BY T. HEMPSTEAD.

I

AM sad for the strength and the fire of youth,

And the light that hath passed away;

But I bless my God for the sighing of winds

Through the beautiful woods of May.

I am glad with the streams, I rejoice with the breeze,
With the groves, the fields, the sea,

To feel, to move, to think, to breathe,
And to know that I am free.

I bless my God for the heavenly light,
And the clear, blue, glorious sky,
For the "seeing eye and the hearing ear,"
And the hope that will not die;

I will think on the golden hours gone by,
I will dwell on the present bloom,
And the many smiles that are hid for me
In the bright May-land to come.