ROSALIE.

A SKETCH FROM LIFE.

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BY MRS. E. L. CUSHING.

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In a luxurious dressing-room in one of the most aristocratic mansions of Montreal, a young girl stood before a cheval-glass which gave back the full-length reflection of her lovely person, from the rich luxuriance of her rose-crowned ringlets to the sole of the fairy foot, now clad in a sylvan buskin, laced with silken strings over the delicate and naked ankle. The girl’s dress was a fanciful one—it had just been sent home from the dress-maker’s, and she was but rehearsing in it, preparatory to her appearance as the goddess Flora at a fancy-ball, to be given shortly by the officers of the garrison to the élite of the city.

An attempt to personate the bright floral divinity of Spring might seem to argue undue vanity on the part of Alicia de Rochemont, but she had consented to do so at the suggestion of her preferred admirer, Captain Clairville, who declared that he had once met the celebrated Dutchess of S—— in that character, at a masquerade, and that she looked divinely, though even her fresh and radiant beauty was far less dazzling than that of Miss De Rochemont’s. Alicia thought every one who flattered her sincere, and so she believed the gay captain, and following his directions as to her costume, stood now before her mirror, a lovely impersonation of the ever-youthful deity who presides over the floral creation.

Her robe, of the finest tissue, changed its hues with every motion of the graceful wearer, now glowing with tints of sapphire, now assuming the hue of the rose, then fading to a tender purple, or a violet-azure, and the effect of all was softened by the transparent folds of an almost impalpable veil, which floated around the figure of the goddess, like the fleecy clouds which in the balmy nights of summer follow the bright pathway of the moon, chastening often, but never obscuring her lustre. Her white and rounded arms, bare to the shoulders, were wreathed with flowers; her hair was crowned with roses, and in one hand she carried a cornucopia filled with exquisite blossoms, which she was supposed to scatter on the earth, as she passed over it.

For a few minutes Alicia continued to survey herself with evident satisfaction—turning first to this side, then to that, and at last retreating step by step, and again slowly advancing toward her mirror, to study the full effect of her brilliant tout ensemble.

“Mrs. Wetmore says, Miss,” remarked her maid, “that there will not be so beautiful a dress among them all as yours.”

“Nor so handsome a goddess,” responded Alicia, “did she not say that also, Ferris?”

“Of course she did, Miss,” returned the maid, who always stood ready to apply the unction of flattery to her young mistress—“everybody says that,” she added, “and sure if they did not, your own mirror would tell it to you.”

“But everybody might not believe what the mirror says, Ferris, though neither you nor I think it tells lies,” said Alicia. “But never mind, it is all very well, except these mock-roses, and they are such trumpery things I will not disgrace myself by wearing them,” and snatching the garland of artificial roses from her head she threw it contemptuously across the floor. “I can have abundance of natural flowers of every description except roses, and every one tells me they are not to be found.”

“Then, Miss, how can you expect to have them? Sure, they will not blow in the midst of these mountains of snow,” said Ferris.

“But Captain Clairville declares I am no true goddess without them,” said Alicia—“that the Dutchess of S—— had the loveliest crown of fragrant roses on her head, besides boquets of them in her hands and on her bosom, and that to be seen with these things of cloth and wire would make me ridiculous. No, it will never do; I must and will have real roses—roses! roses! Ferris, for the Goddess Flora, or I will go to bed and not get up again for a year.”

“Oh pray, Miss, don’t talk so,” said Ferris. “I am sure I would get roses for you if I could—but where upon earth are they to be had in the heart of this terrible winter? All the gardeners say theirs have frozen, and for that matter, Miss, I was near being frozen myself the bitter day you sent me out to ransack the suburbs for them—into every alley and corner I went without finding so much as a bud to bless myself with, though Dame Paton says hers never failed before, and in the coldest weather the Misses Franchettes were never known to be without them.”

“But you said something, Ferris, of a rose-tree which a poor girl had in some out of the way place, I forget where. Pray why cannot you get from them the flowers I want, and which indeed I must and will have?”

“Oh, la! Miss, who would have the heart to rob that bush? It blossoms but once a year, and is the only treasure of a poor girl who watches its flowers to lay them on her mother’s grave.”

“How doleful! Is it a sad-looking rose, Ferris?” asked Alicia.

“Oh no, Miss, quite gay, and the loveliest white, with just the faintest blush you ever saw,” said Ferris—“at least, so the buds looked which were just bursting open—perfect wreaths of them, which would bring ever so much money if the girl would only sell them; but no, she will not part with one, saving them all till the anniversary of her mother’s death, when she strews them over her grave, and they say it is a lovely sight to see the heap of snow which covers it all of a blush with the living roses.”

“How strange! quite sentimental, I declare,” said Alicia, adjusting her veil into more becoming folds before the mirror as she spoke. “But, then,” she added, “what a sin to throw away such lovely flowers; just now, too, when there is nowhere else a rose to be had, and so many would be thankful for them at any price. I am sure they would adorn the living more than the dead, for exposed to this frightful cold they cannot even beautify the grave many minutes before they are changed to ice.”

“Oh, Miss, old Suzanne says she has seen them lying there for days together; stiff enough to be sure, but looking blooming, and so beautiful in the white snow, and sometimes there falls a fine sleet and freezes on them, and they sparkle as if covered with diamonds; and then Rosalie, that is the name of the young girl, smiles and says the angels have wept on them—so she watches them till they change, and then throws over them the lightest snow she can find, and they settle down as the snow melts, and in the spring their faded leaves are all found lying on the green grave, sometimes quite fresh-like and sweet as it were.”

“What a fuss about nothing,” said the volatile beauty; “the girl must have lost her senses, or if she has not, other people have, to see such lovely roses perishing in the snow, and never taking the trouble to carry them away from that frozen place.”

“What, Miss, lift them from the grave!” exclaimed Ferris, with a burst of indignation that reproved the flippant selfishness of her mistress, “who would dare do such a thing? It would be the very sin of sacrilege that Father Dougherty talked of last Sunday, and I for one, would choose never to look upon another flower, rather than pluck even a leaf from those which that poor girl lays upon her mother’s grave.”

“Goodness me, Ferris, how very pathetic you are,” said Alicia, slightly coloring, with shame we hope, “but I am not so easily melted, and the roses I must have—fairly purchased of the girl if she will sell them, if not, by some other means, for obtain them I must; and if with your aid, Ferris, a rich reward shall be yours—if you refuse it, there are those to whom I have shown far less kindness than to you who would not so willingly disoblige me.”

“Indeed, Miss,” said Ferris, half-crying and alarmed by the dread of losing a good place, “there is nobody in the whole world that I would do so much for as you—any thing that was right, Miss, I could never disobey you in—but to rob the dead! who could do that and hope ever to have a quiet night again?”

“Nonsense!” ejaculated Alicia, with a contemptuous curl of her pretty lip, “what have you to do with the dead in this matter? I ask you to go to the living, to the girl herself once more, and tempt her with gold, which she must need, to give you these precious flowers. I do not care what you offer her, sovereigns, guineas, any thing you please, if so you win from her the roses—I am no goddess without them—but crowned with such a lovely garland, I shall rival Flora herself—walk a divinity among the men, and cause all the women to expire with envy.”

And at the bare thought of such a triumph, the spoiled little beauty crossed the room with as regal a step as though she really trod the cloudy heights of Olympus, and casting off her veil and robe of changeful hue, she wrapped her fairy form in a luxurious dressing-gown, and sunk quite exhausted into the arms of a capacious fauteuil, from beneath the downy cushions of which she drew forth the last new novel, and soon seemingly abandoned herself to its absorbing interest.

“I will try, Miss, once more for the roses,” said Ferris, as she turned to leave the room, “unless you are willing Grayson should go—she knows the place, for she went there with me, Miss, and would, I think, be much more likely to get them than I should.”

“I care not a pin who goes, Ferris,” said Alicia, looking up from beneath the mass of silk and down in which she sat half-buried—“only let me have the roses and I will not even ask how they were got, or by whom.” And again she sunk listlessly down into what might have seemed a little bundle of embroidered silk, but for the crown of shining ringlets just visible in its midst.

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