e.'

'May I come to see you?'

'O yes, pray let me show you our cottage.'

'When may I come?'

'To-morrow, I suppose.'

She felt, rather than saw him watching her all the way from the
garden-gate to the wood. That little colloquy was the sunshiny point in
her day. Had the tidings been communicated in the full circle, it would
have been as nothing compared with their reservation for her private ear,
with the marked 'I wanted to tell _you_.' Then she came home, looked at
Maria threading holly-berries, and her heart fainted within her. There
were moments when poor Maria would rise before her as a hardship and an
infliction, and then she became terrified, prayed against such feelings
as a crime, and devoted herself to her sister with even more than her
wonted patient tenderness.

The certainty that the visit would take place kept her from all
flutterings and self-debate, and in due time Mr. Randolf arrived.
Anxiously did Phoebe watch for his look at Maria, for Bertha's look at
him, and she was pleased with both. His manner to Maria was full of
gentleness, and Bertha's quick eyes detected his intellect. He stood an
excellent examination from her and Miss Fennimore upon the worn channel
of Niagara, which had so often been used as a knockdown argument against
Miss Charlecote's cosmogony; and his bright terse powers of description
gave them, as they agreed, a better idea of his woods than any travels
which they had read.

It was no less interesting to observe his impression of the English
village-life at Hiltonbury. To him, the aspect of the country had an air
of exquisite miniature finish, wanting indeed in breadth and freedom, but
he had suffered too much from vain struggling single-handed with Nature
in her might, not to value the bounds set upon her; and a man who knew by
personal experience what it was to seek his whole live stock in an
interminable forest, did not complain of the confinement of hedges and
banks. Nay, the 'hedgerow elms and hillocks green' were to him as
classical as Whitehall; he treated Maria's tame robins with as much
respect as if they had been Howards or Percies; holly and mistletoe were
handled by him with reverential curiosity; and the church and home of his
ancestors filled him with a sweet loyal enthusiasm, more eager than in
those to whom these things were familiar.

Miss Charlecote herself came in for some of these feelings. He admired
her greatly in her Christmas aspect of La