been felt by some of the intruders; or
contrived that they should find nothing to detain them.

It was a long business, to turn over all those delicious portraits of
floral life and give anything like a sufficient look at each one. Such
glories of vegetable beauty Faith had never imagined. It was almost a
new revelation. There were deep brilliant crimsons; there was the
loveliest rose-colour, in large heads of the close elegant flowers;
there were, larger still and almost incredible in their magnificence,
enormous clusters of cream-coloured and tinted and even of buff. There
were smaller and humbler members of the family, which would have been
glorious in any other companionship. There were residents of the rich
regions of the tropics; and less superb members of the temperate zones;
there were trees and shrubs; and there were little bushy, hardy
denizens of the highest and barrenest elevations of rocks and snow to
which inflorescence ever climbs. Faith almost caught her breath.

"And these are in the wilderness!" she said.

"Yes. What then?" said the doctor. Faith did not say.

"You are thinking they 'waste their sweetness'?"

"O no, indeed! I don't think that."

"You are thinking something. Please let me be the better for it."

"One ought to be the better for it," said Faith.

"Then I hope you won't refuse it to me," said Dr. Harrison gently
laughing at her.

"I was thinking, Dr Harrison, what the Bible says,--'He hath made
everything beautiful in his time';--and, 'God saw everything that he
had made, and behold it was very good.'"

The doctor turned over the leaf to a new Rhododendron. Faith's thoughts
went to Pequot, and her heart gave a bound of joy at the remembrance of
the sick woman there.

Mrs. Stoutenburgh's crimson dress was so softly worn and managed, that
the wearer thereof was close in Dr. Harrison's neighbourhood for a
minute before he was aware of her presence; which quiet motions, it
should be observed, were habitual to Mrs. Stoutenburgh, and not at all
assumed for the occasion. Therefore it was with no idea of startling
anybody, that she said presently, "My dear Faith, what _are_ you
looking at through those Rhododendrons?" Faith started, and looked up
with a bit of a smile.

"What do you see, Mrs. Stoutenburgh?" said the doctor.

"O several things," said the lady, passing her hand softly over Faith's
brow, and then with one of her sudden impulses putting her lips there.
"Do you like the