ing.
They trusted their daughter as themselves; or, if any possible fear had
flitted across their hearts, it was allayed by the absorbing delight
with which Richard Hilton pursued his study. An earnest discussion as to
whether a certain leaf was ovate or lanceolate, whether a certain plant
belonged to the species scandens or canadensis, was, in their eyes,
convincing proof that the young brains were touched, and therefore NOT
the young hearts.

But love, symbolized by a rose-bud, is emphatically a botanical emotion.
A sweet, tender perception of beauty, such as this study requires, or
develops, is at once the most subtile and certain chain of communication
between impressible natures. Richard Hilton, feeling that his years were
numbered, had given up, in despair, his boyish dreams, even before he
understood them: his fate seemed to preclude the possibility of love.
But, as he gained a little strength from the genial season, the pure
country air, and the release from gloomy thoughts which his rambles
afforded, the end was farther removed, and a future--though brief,
perhaps, still a FUTURE--began to glimmer before him. If this could
be his life,--an endless summer, with a search for new plants every
morning, and their classification every evening, with Asenath's help
on the shady portico of Friend Mitchenor's house,--he could forget his
doom, and enjoy the blessing of life unthinkingly.

The azaleas succeeded to the anemones, the orchis and trillium followed,
then the yellow gerardias and the feathery purple pogonias, and finally
the growing gleam of the golden-rods along the wood-side and the red
umbels of the tall eupatoriums in the meadow announced the close of
summer. One evening, as Richard, in displaying his collection, brought
to view the blood-red leaf of a gum-tree, Asenath exclaimed--

"Ah, there is the sign! It is early, this year."

"What sign?" he asked.

"That the summer is over. We shall soon have frosty nights, and
then nothing will be left for us except the asters and gentians and
golden-rods."

Was the time indeed so near? A few more weeks, and this Arcadian life
would close. He must go back to the city, to its rectilinear streets,
its close brick walls, its artificial, constrained existence. How could
he give up the peace, the contentment, the hope he had enjoyed through
the summer? The question suddenly took a more definite form in his mind:
How could he give up Asenath? Yes--the quiet, unsuspe