"You--must stay to tea, and--not--go home until--after sunset, when it is cooler," she murmured, drowsily, and with a dim conviction that this was a Sabbath of long ago, that Lucina was a little girl in a short frock and pantalettes; then in a few minutes her head drooped limply towards her shoulder, and all her thoughts relaxed into soft slumberous breaths.
When her aunt fell asleep, Lucina looked up, with that quick, startled sense of loneliness which sometimes, in such case, comes to a sensitive consciousness.

"Aunt Camilla is asleep," she thought; she turned to her book again.

It was a copy of Mrs.Hemans's poems.
Somehow the vivid sentiment of the lines failed to please her, though she, like her young lady friends, had heretofore loved them well.
Lucina read the first stanza of "The warrior bowed his crested head" with no thrill of her maiden breast; then she turned to "The Bride of the Greek Isles," and that was no better.
She arose, tiptoed softly over to the table, and examined the other books thereon.

There were volumes of the early English poets, an album, and _A Souvenir of Friendship_, in red and gold, like the Hemans.

She opened the souvenir, and looked idly at the small, exquisitely fine steel engravings, the alliterative verses, the tales of sentiment beginning with long preambles couched in choicest English.