FOREVER. <br><br> "Promise!" <br><br> "I do, solemnly." <br><br> "Forever?" continued the solemn, broken voice. <br><br> "Forever," echoed the weeping maiden by the bedside. <br><br> The wasted hands were raised over the heads of the kneeling figures; the pale lips of the dying woman parted, the tongue tried to utter a blessing; but all brightness faded from the eyes. The woman was dead. <br><br> Two young girls knelt at the bedside. Constance Owen was the name of one, with sallow skin and large brown eyes, and Edith Ormond, she was called, with ringlets of gold floating around her fair neck, and whose head was leaning upon the shoulder of Constance, who had promised the dying woman to be a sister, protector - mother even - to the fair maiden at her side. <br><br> The strong, faithful, homely girl called Constance was an adopted daughter of the dead lady - one of those waifs of the street, whose only hope of life is in charity of some tender-hearted stranger. She, however, repaid her protector by a love and regard as filial as that of her own daughter, and when upon her death-bed Mrs. Ormond bade Constance Owen make the solemn promise recorded, the brave girl not only did not falter, but whispered once more to the stricken girl at her side. <br><br> "Yes, Edith, for the sake of the love your dear mother gave to the orphan will I love you better than myself - forever." <br><br> Two years passed - two years since Edith the beautiful and Constance the brave had lost their vest earthly friend. The former had grown more lovely even than the promise of the dawn of her radiant maidenhood; the latter more homely, larger featured in the face but with years and added dignity of mien, a more intelligent light in the quiet, tender brown eyes, and force of character better defined in every movement. There came many a suitor to Bonnybrook - so the little country-seat belonging to Edith was called - but, so far, the little coquette did not pay much heed to any of them. She was chasing the butterflies of fancy around that garden of Eden - first youth. But at length her beauty, grace, and perhaps high social position, brought one day to the gates of Bonnybrook one Dr. Paulding, a superior and rising young physician, who lived in the city close by, and when he had found his way to that pleasant country nook, somehow he discovered patients in that vicinity very frequently. Was it Edith's fair face that made him take that blooming highway so often? <br><br> He was indeed fascinated by her bright, girlish beauty, and one evening after he had been wandering in the gardens, under the moon, soft, pleasant words must have been spoken, for after he had gone, Edith, with a flushed face, dashed into the room where Constance was awaiting her, and said in a happy, trembling voice. <br><br> "Oh! Darling, I am so happy. He has told me he loved me." <br><br> Constance spoke not a word. Edith was held a moment to a beating heart, and a soft kiss touched her forehead, and the next moment she was alone. <br><br> "He loves me, he loves me!" and Edith looked out over the gardens, from which the dews of night were distilling all their odors; she gazed at the beautiful moon, and peopled the shadows with the image of the man who had first stirred her young life with the divine music of love. <br><br> A month after the pleasant confession had been made, Edith was called to the mountains of Vermont to attend a dying aunt, the only sister of her dear mother, and she had to proceed alone, as Bonnybrook would have lacked a guardian if Constance had accompanied her - Dr. Paulding's duties utterly denying him that pleasure. <br><br> Constance was engrossed in her home duties, and saw out little society, save a few rustic neighbors, who only recommended themselves by their goodness of heart, and certainly not by the brilliancy of their wit or understanding. Once in a while, Dr. Paulding would ride out to Bonnybrook, as Constance told him, "from force of habit," but soon it seemed that the man of medicine did not carry on the conversation with the old ease, grace, and spirit. What had come between Constance Owen and himself? Something inexplicable. The noble woman found a strange rare pleasure in the society of [continued in next article, Forever part 2].