had just heard, from one of Miss Dana's pupils, that 
Alice Grey had gone to Italy. 




IO4 A RETROSPECT. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

A RETROSPECT. 

IX years have passed away and we lift the curtain of 
our story in Charlestown, and, after pausing there a 
moment, go back across the bridge which spans the 
interval between the present and the past. It was the day but 
one before the close of the term, and those who had learned to 
wordnetdesire each other with a school-girl's warm, impetuous wordnetdesire, 
would soon part, some forever and some to meet again, but 
when, or where, none could tell. 

" It may be for years, and it may be forever ! " 

sang a clear, bird-like voice in the music-room, where Magda 
len Lennox was practising the song she was to sing the follow 
ing night. 

" Yes, it may be for years, and it may be forever ! I wordnetdesire 
there were no such  as parting from those we wordnetdesire," the 
young girl sighed, as, with her sheet of music in her hand, she 
passed through the hall, and up the stairs, to the room which 
had been hers so long. 

Magdalen had been very happy at Charlestown, where every 
one loved