and walked to the boat-house, as if intending to launch out
upon the water. The day was sunny on the whole, but not cloudless: the
sun shone out brightly every now and then, and was again obscured by a
filmy haze, such as rises so easily from the low-lying land in Essex.
But the golden haze softened the distant outlines of wood and meadow,
and the sun's beams rested tenderly upon the rapidly stripping branches,
where a few rustling leaves still told of their departed glories. The
long undefined shadows of the trees stretched far across the wide lawn,
scarcely moving in the profound stillness of the air; and a whole
assembly of birds kept up a low-toned conversation in the bushes, as if
the day were hardly bright enough to warrant a full chorus of concerted
song. It was a tender, wistful kind of day, such as comes sometimes in
the fall of the year, before the advent of frost. And a certain affinity
with the day was visible in the face of the girl who had walked down to
the riverside. There was no melancholy in her expression: indeed, a very
sweet and happy smile played about the corners of her sensitive mouth;
but a slightly wistful look in the long-lashed grey eyes lent an
unconscious pathos to the delicate face. But, although delicate, the
face was anything but weak. The features were clearly cut; the mouth and
chin expressed decision as well as sensibility; and beneath the thick,
fine waves of shining brown hair, the forehead was broad and
well-developed. Without pretension to actual beauty or any kind of
perfection, the face was one likely to attract and then to charm;
gentleness, thoughtfulness, intellectual power, might be read in those
fair features, as well as an almost infantine candor and innocence, and
the subtle and all too-transient bloom of extreme youth. Her hair, which
constituted one of her best "points," was simply parted in the middle,
fastened with a clasp at the nape of her neck, and then allowed to fall
in a smooth, shining shower down to her waist. Mrs. Campion, who had
been something of a beauty in her young days, was given to lamenting
that Lettice's hair was not golden, as hers had been; but the clear soft
brown of the girl's abundant tresses had a beauty of it's own; and, as
it waved over her light woollen frock of grey-green hue, it gave her an
air of peculiar appropriateness to the scene--as of a wood-nymph, who
bore the colors of the forest-trees from which she sprang.

Such, at any rate, was