"I never loved him!" was what she murmured. "I never meant to marry
him!"

"Miss Changarnier!" exclaimed Mr. St. George, dismounting, thinking,
perhaps, that trouble made her wild. "Here? To-day? Alone? You must
return at once!"

"I never, never will return, unless you take me back!" she said, raising
her head, but not daring to raise her quivering glance.

"Eloise! Eloise! Do you know what you say?"

She ventured just a glimpse at the dark eyes above her, glowing and
glooming, smiles breaking out of their pain, and then with a little
blind motion the tender face was hidden in his breast.

Just there a cloud peeled off the sun and went all radiant upon its way,
the silent birds fell into one deep chorus, the locust shot out its
great whirring lance of jubilant sound, the whole forest grew astir and
alive over the glad secret it had learned.

The sun was setting, when Mr. St. George, leading his horse, on whose
back Eloise was throned, and followed by Hazel and Vane, came into view
of the wondering, waiting, indignant party on the piazza. The party,
fickle as any mob, be it patrician or plebeian, was easily appeased with
such quarry as it found, and changed itself straightway with acclaim
into a bridal party. That night St. George brought in and tried upon the
third finger of the white left-hand a narrow glittering band.

"Nothing but a wedding-fetter?" he asked. "Yet capable of great things,
that fetter! It holds the famous elixir which sinks two identities in
one; it is the visible sign of a sacrament; it is to be the type of our
souls' union, pure, perfect, and without end"----

But here, perhaps, the eyes of Eloise silenced him, perhaps the mouth.
And when life settled in its new channel at The Rim, Eloise, wearing at
last her father's name, sat at the head of her husband's table, and Mrs.
Earl St. George Erne herself entertained her guests. They lingered a
little while, with the disinclination that any group finds to separate,
and circumstances had knitted a bond among them all. And then, when
deepening summer ended the renewed cheer, Mrs. Arles put on her
widow's-cap once more, her little foot went into obscurity, and the gold
and ebony riding-whip hung reclaimed above her mantel.

WATCHING.

In childhood's season fair,
On many a balmy, moonless summer night,
While wheeled the light-house arms of dark and bright
Far through the humid air,--

How patien