ey could be twenty hours beforehand. It only remained to
take a final view of the house in the evening (when the children's
presents were to be discovered), and to cut the wedding-cake. In the
interval, there was nothing to be done. Conversation flagged; every one
was dull; and it was a relief to the rest when Mr Hope proposed to
Hester to take a walk.

Mrs Rowland would have laughed at the idea of a walk on a December
afternoon, if she had happened to know of the circumstance; but others
than lovers might have considered it pleasant. The sun was still an
hour from its setting; and high in the pale heaven was the large moon,
ready to shine upon the fields and woods, and shed a milder day. No
frost had yet bound up the earth; it had only stripped the trees with a
touch as gentle as that of the fruit-gatherer. No wintry gusts had yet
swept through the woods; and all there was this day as still as in the
autumn noon, when the nut is heard to drop upon the fallen leaves, and
the light squirrel is startled at the rustle along its own path. As a
matter of course, the lovers took their way to the Spring in the Vernon
woods, the spot which had witnessed more of their confidence than any
other. In the alcove above it they had taken shelter from the summer
storm and the autumn shower; they had sat on its brink for many an hour,
when the pure depths of its rocky basin seemed like coolness itself in
the midst of heat, and when falling leaves fluttered down the wind, and
dimpled the surface of the water. They now paused once more under
shelter of the rock which overhung one side of the basin, and listened
to the trickle of the spring. If "aside the devil turned for envy" in
the presence of the pair in Paradise, it might be thought that he would
take flight from this scene also; from the view of this resting of the
lovers on their marriage eve, when the last sun of their separate lives
was sinking, and the separate business of their existence was finished,
and their paths had met before the gate of their paradise, and they were
only waiting for the portal to open to them. But there was that on
Hester's brow which would have made the devil look closer. She was
discomposed, and her replies to what was said were brief, and not much
to the purpose. After a few moments' silence, Mr Hope said gaily--

"There is something on our minds, Hester. Come, what is it?"

"Do not say `our minds.' You know you never have anything on y