Page:Life and transactions of Mrs. Jane Shore (2).pdf/16

 16 talking of his native country, to whose blue mountains his mind was ever anon reverting.And time passed thus delightfully on, and every day linked him closer and closer, with the little family. The affectionate old woman looked upon him as filling up the place of her youngest and dearest son; and Mariette, in her girlish enthusiasm loved him better than a brother. But the life of a soldier is, of all others, the most changeable ; and, although not unexpectedly, the orders came abruptly, that he must leave the gay fields of France, and embark for his native land. Anxious as he was to see the friends and the scenes to which he had been so long a stranger, it was not without bitter feelings that he left the cottage where he had spent two years of quiet enjoyment. Now did the widow and the daughter feel his departure less severely. It was to them like another family bereavement. The old woman hung upon his neck and sobbed, while Mariette stood like a beautiful statue, gazing stedfastly at him through eyes from which the big tears were incessantly trickling. -- " You have been," cried the afflicted widow, third son to me-you have filled the place of Julian- you have charmed away my bereavements; and must you leave me too? Oh it brings all my sorrows back upon me. 'There is no hope that you shall return--say not there is hope, as my husband and sons did. I have learned well that delusion ;--I know you will never re- turn-but in the country to which you may go, may the God of good bless you !—and this will be my first prayer in the morning, and my last in the evening. Mariette said not a word; and the soldier, who wished to throw a lightness over the scene, and to divert the poor girl from the seeming intensity of her thoughts took her familiarly by the hand, with the intention of addressing her playfully. But suddenly his spirits for- sook him ; --- there was a passion in her posture that et overcame him; and this was, perhaps, the first time in which he beheld her in any other light than tha of a young and artless girl. “Mariette," lie said, with a 13