Dearest,--say?
Keep it for ever or throw it away?
Oh love, my love! I have giv'n you my life, Like a ring of gold; Symbol of peace in a world of strife, To have and to hold.
What will you do with it, Dearest,--say?
Treasure it always, or throw it away?
Oh love, my love! Have all your will-- I am yours to the end; Be false or faithful--comfort or kill, Be lover or friend,-- Where gifts are given they must remain, I never shall ask for them back again! "Do you know that you have a very beautiful voice, Miss Mary ?" said Angus, after hearing this for the second time.
"Oh, I don't think so at all,"-- she answered, quickly; "Father used to like to hear me sing--but I can only just give ballads their meaning, and pronounce the words carefully so the people may know what I am trying to sing about.

I've no real voice." "You have!" And Angus turned to Helmsley for his opinion--"Hasn't she, David ?" "Her voice is the sweetest _I_ ever heard,"-- replied Helmsley--"But then I'm not much of a judge." And his thoughts went roving back to certain entertainments in London which he had given for the benefit of his wealthy friends, when he had paid as much as five or six hundred guineas in fees to famous opera singers, that they might shriek or warble, as their respective talents dictated, to crowds of indifferent loungers in his rooms, who cared no more for music than they did for religion.

He almost smiled as he recalled those nights, and contrasted them with this New Year's evening, when seated in an humble cottage, he had for his companions only a lowly-born poor woman, and an equally lowly-born poor man, both of whom evinced finer education, better manners, greater pride of spirit, and more resolute independence than nine-tenths of the "society" people who had fawned upon him and flattered him, simply because they knew he was a millionaire.

And the charm of his present position was that these two, poor, lowly-born people were under the impression that even in their poverty and humility they were better off than he was, and that because fortune had been, as they considered, kind to them, they were bound to treat him in a way that should not remind him of his dependent and defenceless condition.

It was impossible to imagine greater satisfaction than that which he enjoyed in the contemplation of his own actual situation as compared with that which he had impressed upon the minds of these two friends of his who had given him their friendship trustingly and frankly for himself alone.