nd you have kept your promise, sweetheart," he said. "Do you remember
that promise?"

"Yes," she said. "It has been so easy to keep it. All joy and pleasure
to give you what you asked for that day in the Abbey church."

So, with interchange of loving words, the husband and wife saw the
shadows of the night steal over the woods and far-stretching level
country round their home.

The lovers were also enjoying their twilight walk, and talking, as
lovers will, of the bliss of the future they are to spend together.

A happy dream is that dream of young love; but is there anything in this
mutable life more beautiful than the deepening of that young love into
the serene and blessed sympathy of a husband and wife who, through the
changes and chances of ten years, can feel, as Leslie and Griselda felt,
more secure in each other's loyalty and truth as time rolls on; who can
feel that if all other earthly props and joys vanish, their love will
remain, that sorrow is shared and grief softened, that all good will be
intensified and all happiness doubled, because felt by _two_, who are
yet _one_ in the highest sense?

This is the true marriage, which has been taken as a type of the highest
and the holiest union. Why is it that it is so often missed? Why does
the reality of love so often flee away, and only a ghost-like shadow and
pale semblance remain?

There is a solution of this problem, but it is not for me to give it
here. The hearts of many who read the story of Leslie and Griselda will,
if they are true and honest, answer the question each one for herself,
and it may be with tears and unavailing regret, yes! and of
self-reproach also, that this full cup of bliss has never reached their
lips, but that the honeyed sweetness of the elixir of youth has, long
ere old age is reached, been as an exceeding bitter cup given them to
drink!

As the husband and wife of whom I write, went into their peaceful home,
they looked up at the sky where the stars were shining in all their
majesty, and their thoughts turned to their friends who were far away,
and probably making their accustomed preparation for sweeping the sky.

Many and many a summer night has come and gone since then; many and many
eyes have been raised to the star-lit sky, and keen intellects and
abstruse calculations have brought to light much for which the great
astronomer, William Herschel, prepared the way. But I doubt if even
amongst them all has been found a more