A NEW YEAR'S GIFT.

—Mrs. Osgood.

On the following Christmas morning Mrs. Clendenon, Mrs. Winans and Lulu, together with the returned captain, all attended divine service at the Protestant Episcopal Church.

It seems strange how many of us become recognized members of the Church of Christ under religious conviction, without ever having any great and realizing sense of the saving power of God, not only in the matter of the world beyond, but in the limitless power of sustaining us among the trials of this.

This had been peculiarly the case with our heroine. She had for years been a member of the Episcopal Church, and, as the world goes, a dutiful member. But religion had been to her mind too much in the abstract, too much a thing above and beyond her to be taken into her daily life in the part of a comforter and sustainer. She had gone to the world for consolation in the hour of her trial. It had failed her. To-day as the glorious old "Te Deum" rose and soared grandly through the arches of the temple of worship, filling her soul with sublime pathos, she began to see how He, who had dimly held to her the place of a Saviour in the world beyond, is an ever-present Comforter and sustainer in the fateful Gethsemane of this probationary earth.

Captain Clendenon, as he sat by her side and heard the low, musical voice as it uttered the prayerful responses to the Litany, thought her but little lower than the angels. She in her deep and newly roused humility felt herself scarcely worthy to take the name of a long misunderstood Saviour on her lips. Few of the congregation who commented, on dispersing, relative to the pearl-fair beauty and elegant apparel of the Senator's deserted wife, fathomed the feelings that throbbed tumultuously beneath that pale calm bearing as they left the sacred edifice.

"Lulu," she queried later, as up in the young lady's dressing-room they had laid aside their warm wrappings and furs. "Lulu, what do you do for Christ?"

Lulu turned about in some surprise:

"What do I do for Christ?" she repeated. "Oh, Gracie, too little, I fear."

"'Tell me," she persisted.

"Well, then, I have my Sabbath-school class, my list of Christ's poor, whom I visit and aid to the best of my ability, my missionary fund, and finally, Gracie, dearest, whatever my hand 'findeth to do,' I try to do with all my might."

Gracie stood still, twisting one of the long curls that swept to her waist over one diamond-ringed white finger.

"Darling, why do you ask?" Lulu said, with her arm about the other's waist.

The fair cheek nestled confidingly against Lulu's own.

"I want to help you, if you will let me—let me go with you on your errands for Christ. I belong to the world no longer. Show me how to fill up the measure of my days with prayerful work for the Master."

One pearly drop from Lulu's eyes fell down on the golden head that had pillowed itself on her breast.

"God, I thank Thee," she murmured, "that there is joy in heaven to-day over the lamb that has come into the fold."

She whispered it to Brother Willie that day at a far corner of the parlor when they happened to be alone for a moment together.

He glanced across at the slender, stately figure standing at the window between the falling lace curtains, looking wistfully out.

"It is natural," he said. "A nature so pure, so strong, so devotional as hers must needs have more than the world can give to satisfy its immortal cravings. Poor girl! she is passing through the fire of affliction. Let us thank God that she is coming out pure gold."

After awhile, when Lulu had slipped from the room, leaving them alone together, he crossed over to her side, and began telling her of his experiences and adventures abroad. She listened, pleased and interested, soothed by his kind, almost brotherly tone.

"You do not ask me after Winans," said he, playfully, at last.

She did not answer, save by a heightened flush.

"You did not know that through his reckless bravery, his gentleness and humanity to his men, he has risen to the rank of general in the army of France?" A soldierly flash in the clear gray eyes.

"Yes," she answered in a low voice; "I have seen it in the newspapers."

"You have? Then you have seen also that he——"

He paused, looking down at her quiet face in some perplexity and doubt.

"That he—what?" she asked, looking up at him, and growing slightly pale.

"I do not know how to tell you, if you do not know," his eyes, full of grave compassion, fixed on hers.

One of her small hands groped blindly out, and clung firmly to his arm.

"Captain Clendenon, I know that the Franco-Prussian war is ended. Is that what you mean? Is he—my husband—is he coming home—to America?"

She read in his eyes the negative she felt she could not speak.

"Tell me," she said, desperately, "if he is not coming home, what is it? I am braver than you think. I can bear a great deal. Is he—is he—dead?"

"May God have mercy on your poor, tired little soul," he answered, solemnly. "It is more than we know. In the last great battle, General Winans was wounded near unto death, and left on the field. When search was made for him he was not found. Whatever his fate was—whether he was buried, unshrouded and uncoffined, like many of those poor fellows, in an unknown grave, or whether an unknown fate met him, is as yet uncertain. We hope for the best while we fear the worst."

One hand still lay on his coat-sleeve—the other one followed it, clasped itself over it, and she laid her white face down upon them, creeping closer to him as if to shield herself against his strong, true heart from the storms that beat on her frail woman-life. One moment he felt the wild throb of her agonized heart against his own; then all was still. Lifting the lifeless form on his arm, he laid it on a sofa and called to Lulu:

"I had to tell her!" he exclaimed. "She did not bear it as well as we hoped. I am afraid I have killed her."

Ah! grief seldom kills. If it did, this fair world would not have so many of us striving, busy atoms struggling for its possession.

She came back to life again, lying still and white in Lulu's loving arms. Captain Clendenon and his mother went out and left them together. They would not intrude on the sore heart whose wound they could not heal.

"After all we can hope still," Lulu said, cheerily. "All is uncertainty and mere conjecture. We can still hope on, until something more definite is known."

"Hope," repeated the listener, mournfully.

"Hope, yes," was the firm reply. "Hope and pray. One of Brother Willie's favorite maxims is that hope springs eternal in the human breast!"

"I can bear it," came softly from the other. "I have borne so much, I can still endure. With God's help I will be patient under all."

"Whom He loveth He chasteneth," answered Lulu.

When New Year's Day came with its social gayeties, receptions, and friendly calls, one of Lulu's latest and most surprising visits was from our old friend, Bruce Conway. He had not called on her for a long time, and she had heard that he was in Washington. The warm blood suffused her face as she stood alone in the parlor, with his card in her hand, and it grew rosier as he entered, and with his inimitable, indolent grace, paid the compliments of the season.

"You do not ask me where I have been these many days," he said, as he sipped the steaming mocha she offered him in the daintiest of China cups. She never offered her friends wine.

"I had heard that you were in Washington," she answered, apologetically.

"Right—and what was I doing there? Can you undertake to guess?"

"I am sure it is beyond me." This with her most languid air. "Flirting, perhaps."

A light smile curves his mustached lip. Certainly this little beauty, he thinks, is "good at guessing."

"Have your callers been many to-day?" he asked.

"Quite a number of my friends have called—all, I think. I expect no more this evening," she answers, demurely.

"I am glad of that. I shall have you all to myself, Lulu—willful, indifferent still, since you will not ask my object in Washington, I will e'en tell you anyhow."

"Go on—I am listening."

Putting down the cup he had finished, he seated himself on the sofa by her side, good-humoredly taking no notice of the fact that she moved a little farther away from him.

"How pretty you are looking, ma belle. Your blue silk is the loveliest shade—so becoming; your laces exquisite. Scarlet geraniums in your hair—ah! Lulu, for whose sake?"

"Not for yours," she flashes, with a hot remembrance that he has always liked her in scarlet geraniums.

A slow smile dawns in his eyes—his lips keep their pretense of gravity.

he begins to hum.

"All this is not telling me what mischief you were at in Washington?" she interrupts.

"Oh," trying to look demure, but woefully failing, "no mischief at all—only paying off old scores—spoiling Fontenay's fun for him as he did for me last winter.

"Miss Clendenon, you are hard on a poor follow. Why don't you ask her name; if she is pretty; if she is in the 'set;' if she is rich; and so on, ad infinitum?"

"I hardly care to know," she answers, with pretty unconcern.

"Hardly care to know—now, really? I shall tell you anyhow. Well, she is an heiress; is pretty; in her second Washington season; father in the banking business, and Fontenay, despairing of winning you, has transferred his 'young affections' to her. She rather likes him—will marry him, perhaps, but then——"

"But then?"

"She likes me, too, and I have teased the gallant captain considerably. Oh, the drives I have had with the fair Cordelia, the gas-light flirtations; the morning strolls to the capitol; the art-gallery; everywhere, in short, where you went with the major. I am not sure but she would throw him over for me altogether."

Her heart sinks within her. Has his fickle love turned from her so soon to this "fair Cordelia?" Better so, perhaps, for her in the end; but now—oh! she has never loved him so well as at this moment, sitting beside her in his dusk patrician beauty, with a certain odd earnestness underlying his flippant manner.

"Mrs. Conway is well, I hope?" she says, to change that painful conversation.

"Is well?—yes, and misses you amid the gay scenes of the capital. What have you been doing secluded here in your quiet home, little saint?"

"Oh! nothing particularly."

"You have not been falling in love, have you?"

"Why?" with an irrepressible blush.

"I wanted to know—that is all. Brownie, Aunt Conway, and I are going abroad this spring to stay, oh, ever so long."

He is watching her narrowly. She knows it, and changes her sudden start into one of pretty affected surprise.

"Oh, indeed! Will wedding cards and the 'fair Cordelia' bear you company?"

"Not if some one else will. Brownie, cannot you guess why I have come here this evening?" his voice growing eagerly earnest, a genuine love and earnestness shining in his eyes.

"To make a New Year's call, I guess," she answers, with innocent unconsciousness in her large dark eyes, and the faintest dimples around her lips.

"Guess again, Brownie?"

"I cannot; I have not the faintest idea," turning slightly from him.

"Then, Brownie," taking her unwilling hand in his. "I have come to ask you for a New Year's gift."

A scarlet geranium is fastened in with the lace at her throat. She plucks it out and holds it toward him with a mischievous smile.

"Will you take this? I am sorry it is all I have to offer."

He takes the hand that holds the flower and puts it to his lips.

"It is all I ask; so your heart comes with it."

Vainly she tries to draw back; he holds the small hand tighter, bending till his breath floats over her forehead.

"Lulu, I did not come here for the gift of a hot-house flower, though coming from you it is dearer than would be a very flower from those botanical gardens that are the glory of Washington. I wanted a rarer flower—even yourself."

Her face is hidden in one small hand. In low tones she answers:

"I thought this matter was settled long ago. Did I not tell you no?"

There is a long pause. Presently he answers, with a wondrous patience for him:

"You did, and rightly then, for I did not fully appreciate your pure womanly affection. I thought I could easily win you, and having lost you I loved you more. Lulu, I am woefully in earnest. Refuse me now, and you, perhaps, drive me away from you for years—it may be forever. I love you more than I did then—a thousand times better."

Still she is silent.

"Brownie," he pleads, "I am not so fickle as you think me. I have fancied many pretty women, but only loved two—Grace Grey and yourself. My love for her is a thing of the past, and has to do with the past only—'echoes of harp-strings that broke long ago'—my love for you is a thing of the present, and will influence my whole future. You can make of me a nobler man than what I am. Willard is willing, your mother is willing, I have asked them both. Brownie, let us make of that Continental trip a wedding tour?"

Her shy eyes lifted, meeting in his a deeper love than she has ever expected to see in them for her.

"Let me see," he goes on, "Aunt Conway and I are going to Europe in June—that is time enough for you to get ready. Think of it, Brownie, I am to be gone months and months. Can you bear to let me go alone?"

"No, I cannot," she sobs, hiding her face against his shoulder; and Bruce takes her in his arms and kisses her with a genuine fondness, prizing her, after the fashion of most men, all the better because she was so hard to win.