quietly, was considering again the strong pillars on which he had laid his hope, and trying their strength and beauty; till all other things were to him as the mist rolling off from the valley is to the man planted on a watchtower. His meditations were interrupted by the tramp of horse, and a party of riders, male and female, came past them up the hill. Hugh looked on as they went by; Fleda's head was not raised,

“There are some people enjoying themselves," said Hugh. "After all, dear Fleda, we should be very sorry to change places with those gay riders. I would not for a thousand worlds give my hope and treasure for all other they can possibly have, in possession or prospect."

"No, indeed!" said Fleda energetically, and trying to rouse herself; "and besides that, Hugh, we have as it is a great deal more to enjoy than most other people. We are so happy——”

In each other, she was going to say, but the words choked her.

"Those people looked very hard at us, or at one of us," said Hugh. "It must have been you, I think, Fleda.”

"They are welcome," said Fleda; "they couldn't have made much out of the back of my sun-bonnet."

"Well, dear Fleda, I must content myself with little more than looking at you now, for Mr. Winegar is in a hurry for his timber to be sawn, and I must set this noisy concern a going again."

Fleda sat and watched him, with rising and falling hopes and fears, forcing her lips to a smile when he came near her, and hiding her tears at other times; till the shadows stretching well to the east of the meridian, admonished her she had been there long enough; and she left him still going backward and forward tending the saw.

As she went down the hill she pressed involuntarily her hands upon her heart, for the dull heavy pain there. But that was no plaster for it; and when she got to the bridge the soft singing of the little brook was just enough to shake her spirits from the doubtful poise they had kept. Giving one hasty glance along the road and up the hill to make sure that no one was near, she sat down on a stone in the edge of the woods, and indulged in such weeping as her gentle eyes rarely knew; for the habit of patience so cultivated for others' sake constantly rewarded her own life with its sweet fruits. But deep and bitter in proportion was the flow of the fountain once broken up. She struggled to remind herself that "Providence runneth not on broken wheels;" she struggled to repeat to herself, what she did not doubt, that "all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth" to his people, in vain. The slight check for a moment to the torrent of grief but gave it greater head to sweep over the barrier; and the self-reproach that blamed its violence and needlessness only made the flood more bitter. Nature fought against patience for awhile; but when the loaded heart had partly relieved itself patience came in again and she rose up to go home. It

startled her exceedingly to find Mr. Olmney standing before her, and looking so sorrowful that Fleda's eyes could not bear it.

"My dear Miss Ringgan ! forgive me—I hope you will forgive me, but I could not leave you in such distress. I knew that in you it could only be from some very serious cause of grief."

"I cannot say it is from anything new, Mr. Olmney-except to my apprehensions."

"You are all well?" he said inquiringly, after they had walked a few steps in silence.

"Well? yes sir," said Fleda hesitatingly; "but I do not think that Hugh looks very well."

The trembling of her voice told him her thought. But he remained silent.

"You have noticed it?" she said hastily, looking up.

“I think you have told me he always was delicate?"

"And you have noticed him looking so lately, Mr. Olmney?"

"I have thought so,—but you say he always was that. If you will permit me to say so, I have thought the same of you, Miss Fleda."

Fleda was silent; her heart ached again.

“We would gladly save each other from every threatening trouble,” said Mr. Olmney again after a pause; "but it ought to content us that we do not know how. Hugh is in good hands, my dear Miss Ringgan.'

"I know it, sir," said Fleda unable quite to keep back her tears, "and I know very well this thread of our life will not bear the strain always, and I know that the strands must in all probability part unevenly, and I know it is in the power of no blind fate, but that

دو

"Does not lessen your clinging to each other. Oh no! it grows but the tenderer and the stronger for the knowledge."

Fleda could but cry.

"And yet," said he very kindly, "we who are Christians may and ought to learn to take troubles hopefully; for 'tribulation worketh patience; and patience,' that is, quiet waiting on God, 'works experience' of his goodness and faithfulness; and experience worketh hope; and that hope, we know, maketh not ashamed.'"

"I know it," said Fleda; "but Mr. Olmney, how easily the brunt of a new affliction breaks down all that chain of reasoning!

"Yes!" he said sadly and thoughtfully;

66 but my dear Miss Fleda, you know the way to build it up again. I would be very glad to bear all need for it away from you!"

They had reached the gate. Fleda could not look up to thank him; the hand she held out was grasped more than kindly, and he turned away.

Fleda's tears came hot again as she went up the walk; she held her head down to hide them and went round the back way.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Now, the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for the mind is a very opal !-Twelfth Night.

"WELL

ELL what did you come home for?" was Barby's salutation; "here's company been waiting for you till they're tired, and I

"Yes, and it's ungrateful in you to say so," said Barby, "for she's been in a wonderful hurry to see you, or to get somethin' to eat; I don't know which; a little o' both, I hope in charity."

"Why didn't you give her something to eat? Who is it?"

"I don't know who it is! It's one of your highflyers, that's all I can make out. She 'a'n't a hat a bit better than a man's beaver, one 'ud think she had stole her little brother's for a spree, if the rest of her was like common folks; but she's got a tail to her dress as long as from here to Queechy Run; and she's been tiddling in and out here with it puckered up under her arm sixty times. I guess she belongs to some company of female militie, for the body of it is all thick with braid and buttons. I believe she ha'n't sot still five minutes since she come into the house, till I don't know whether I am on my head or my heels."

"But why didn't you give her something to eat?" said Fleda, who was hastily throwing off her gloves and smoothing her disordered hair with her hands into something of composure.

"Did!" said Barby; "I give her some o' them cold biscuit and butter and cheese and a pitcher of milk-sot a good enough meal for anybody— but she didn't take but a crumb, and she turned up her nose at that. Come, go! you've slicked up enough—you're handsome enough to shew yourself to her any time o' day, for all her jig-em-bobs."

"Where is aunt Lucy?"

"She's upstairs; there's been nobody to see her but me.

She's had the

hull lower part of the house to herself, kitchen and all, and she's done nothing but go out of one room into another ever since she come. She'll be in here again directly if you ain't spry.'

Fleda went in, round to the west room, and there found herself in the arms of the second Miss Evelyn, who jumped to meet her and half stifled her with caresses.

"You wicked little creature! what have you been doing? Here have I been growing melancholy over the tokens of your absence, and watching the decline of the sun with distracted feelings these six hours."

"Six hours!" said Fleda smiling.

66

"My dear little Fleda! it's so delicious to see you again!" said Miss Evelyn, with another prolonged hug and kiss.

"My dear Constance! I am very glad-But where are the rest?" "It's unkind of you to ask after anybody but me, when I came here this morning on purpose to talk the whole day to you. Now, dear little Fleda," said Miss Constance, executing an impatient little persuasive caper round her, "won't you go out and order dinner? for I am raging. Your woman did give me something, but I found the want of you had taken away all my appetite; and now the delight of seeing you has exhausted me, and I feel that nature is sinking. The stimulus of gratified affection is too much

for me."

“ You absurd child !” said Fleda; "you haven't mended a bit. But I told Barby to put on the tea-kettle, and I will administer a composing draught as soon as it can be got ready; we don't indulge in dinners here in this wilderness. Meanwhile suppose that exhausted nature try the support of this easy chair?"

She put the visitor gently into it, and, seating herself upon the arm, held her hand and looked at her, with a smiling face, and yet with eyes that were almost too gentle in their welcoming.

"My dear little Fleda! you're as lovely as you can be! Are you glad to see me?"

"Very."

66

66

'Why don't you ask after somebody else?"

'I was afraid of overtasking your exhausted energies.”

"Come and sit down here upon my lap; you shall, or I won't say another word to you. Fleda, you've grown thin! what have you been doing to yourself?"

'Nothing, with that particular purpose."

"I don't care; you've done something. You have been insanely imagining that it is necessary for you to be in three or four places at the same time, and in the distracted effort after ubiquity you are in imminent danger of being nowhere-there's nothing left of you!"

66

"I don't wonder you were overcome at the sight of me," said Fleda.

"But you are looking charmingly, for all that," Constance went on; so charmingly that I feel a morbid sensation creeping all over me while I sit regarding you. Really, when you come to us next winter, if you persist in being, by way of showing your superiority to ordinary human nature,— a rose without a thorn, the rest of the flowers may all shut up at once. And the rose reddens in my very face, to spite me.

'Is 'ordinary human nature' typified by a thorn? You give it rather a poor character."

"I never heard of a Thorn that didn't bear an excellent character," said Constance gravely.

"Hush!" said Fleda laughing; "I don't want to hear about Mr. Thorn, Tell me of somebody else."

"I haven't said a word about Mr. Thorn," said Constance ecstatically, "but since you ask about him I will tell you. He has not acted like himself since you disappeared from our horizon-that is, he has ceased to be at all pointed in his attentions to me; his conversation has lost all the acuteness for which I remember you admired it; he has walked Broadway in a moody state of mind all winter, and grown as dull as is consistent with the essential sharpness of his nature. I ought to except our last interview, though, for his entreaties to mamma that she would bring you home with her were piercing.'

Fleda was unable in spite of herself to keep from laughing, but entreated that Constance would tell her of somebody else.

"My respected parents are at Montepoole, with all their offspring, that is, Florence and Edith, I am at present anxiously enquired after, being nobody knows where, and to be fetched by mamma this evening. Wasn't I good, little Fleda, to run away from Mr. Carleton to come and spend a whole day in social converse with you?"

"Carleton?" said Fleda.

"Yes-O you don't know who he is! he's a new attraction-there's been nothing like him this great while, and all New York is topsy-turvy about him; the mothers are dying with anxiety and the daughters with admiration ; and it's too delightful to see the cool superiority with which he takes it all; like a new star that all the people are pointing their telescopes at, as Thorn said spitefully the other day. O he has turned my head! I have looked till I cannot look at anything else. I can just manage to see a rose, but my dazzled powers of vision are equal to nothing more."

"My dear Constance ! "

"It's perfectly true! Why as soon as we knew he was coming to Montepoole I wouldn't let mamma rest till we all made a rush after him; and when we got here first and I was afraid he wasn't coming, nothing can express the state of my feeliugs! But he appeared the next morning, and then I was quite happy," said Constance, rising and falling in her chair on what must have been ecstatic springs, for wire ones it had none.

"Constance!" said Fleda with a miserable attempt at rebuke, "how can you talk so!

"And so we were all riding round here this morning, and I had the selfdenial to stop to see you and leave Florence and the Marlboroughs to monopolize him all the way home. You ought to love me for ever for it. My dear Fleda," said Constance, clasping her hands and elevating her eyes in mock ecstacy, "if you had ever seen Mr. Carleton !"

"I daresay I have seen somebody as good," said Fleda quietly.

"My dear Fleda!" said Constance, a little scornfully this time, "you haven't the least idea what you are talking about! I tell you he is an Englishman-he's of one of the best families in England-not such as you ever