ple here," said they, simultaneously, and with
an indescribable conviction that they had at last found the very spot.

Yet while they uttered this exclamation the young man and the Lily
turned an apprehensive glance at their dreary associate, deeming it
hardly possible that some tale of earthly affliction should not make
those precincts loathsome, as in every former case. The old man stood
just behind them, so as to form the chief figure in the group, with
his sable cloak muffling the lower part of his visage and his sombre
hat overshadowing his brows. But he gave no word of dissent from their
purpose, and an inscrutable smile was accepted by the lovers as a
token that here had been no footprint of guilt or sorrow to desecrate
the site of their temple of happiness.

In a little time longer, while summer was still in its prime, the
fairy-structure of the temple arose on the summit of the knoll amid
the solemn shadows of the trees, yet often gladdened with bright
sunshine. It was built of white marble, with slender and graceful
pillars supporting a vaulted dome, and beneath the centre of this
dome, upon a pedestal, was a slab of dark-veined marble on which books
and music might be strewn. But there was a fantasy among the people of
the neighborhood that the edifice was planned after an ancient
mausoleum and was intended for a tomb, and that the central slab of
dark-veined marble was to be inscribed with the names of buried ones.
They doubted, too, whether the form of Lilias Fay could appertain to a
creature of this earth, being so very delicate and growing every day
more fragile, so that she looked as if the summer breeze should snatch
her up and waft her heavenward. But still she watched the daily growth
of the temple, and so did old Walter Gascoigne, who now made that spot
his continual haunt, leaning whole hours together on his staff and
giving as deep attention to the work as though it had been indeed a
tomb. In due time it was finished and a day appointed for a simple
rite of dedication.

On the preceding evening, after Adam Forrester had taken leave of his
mistress, he looked back toward the portal of her dwelling and felt a
strange thrill of fear, for he imagined that as the setting sunbeams
faded from her figure she was exhaling away, and that something of her
ethereal substance was withdrawn with each lessening gleam of light.
With his farewell glance a shadow had fallen over the portal, and
Lilias was invisib