to
all manner of refined and innocent enjoyments. There they would hold
pleasant intercourse with one another and the circle of their familiar
friends; there they would give festivals of delicious fruit; there
they would hear lightsome music intermingled with the strains of
pathos which make joy more sweet; there they would read poetry and
fiction and permit their own minds to flit away in day-dreams and
romance; there, in short--for why should we shape out the vague
sunshine of their hopes?--there all pure delights were to cluster like
roses among the pillars of the edifice and blossom ever new and
spontaneously.

So one breezy and cloudless afternoon Adam Forrester and Lilias Fay
set out upon a ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess
together, seeking a proper site for their temple of happiness. They
were themselves a fair and happy spectacle, fit priest and priestess
for such a shrine, although, making poetry of the pretty name of
Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call her "Lily" because her form
was as fragile and her cheek almost as pale. As they passed hand in
hand down the avenue of drooping elms that led from the portal of
Lilias Fay's paternal mansion they seemed to glance like winged
creatures through the strips of sunshine, and to scatter brightness
where the deep shadows fell.

But, setting forth at the same time with this youthful pair, there was
a dismal figure wrapped in a black velvet cloak that might have been
made of a coffin-pall, and with a sombre hat such as mourners wear
drooping its broad brim over his heavy brows. Glancing behind them,
the lovers well knew who it was that followed, but wished from their
hearts that he had been elsewhere, as being a companion so strangely
unsuited to their joyous errand. It was a near relative of Lilias Fay,
an old man by the name of Walter Gascoigne, who had long labored under
the burden of a melancholy spirit which was sometimes maddened into
absolute insanity and always had a tinge of it. What a contrast
between the young pilgrims of bliss and their unbidden associate! They
looked as if moulded of heaven's sunshine and he of earth's gloomiest
shade; they flitted along like Hope and Joy roaming hand in hand
through life, while his darksome figure stalked behind, a type of all
the woeful influences which life could fling upon them.

But the three had not gone far when they reached a spot that pleased
the gentle Lily, and she paused.

"What