hat must
be imposed on this frightful reformer, but her heart grew sick at the
conviction that either she would have to yield, or be regarded as a mere
incubus and obstruction.

With almost a passionate sense of defence of Humfrey's trees, and
Humfrey's barns, she undid the gate of the fir plantations--his special
favourites. The bright April sun shed clear gleams athwart the russet
boles of the trees, candied by their white gum, the shadows were sharply
defined, and darkened by the dense silvered green canopy, relieved by
fresh light young shoots, culminating in white powdery clusters, or
little soft crimson conelets, all redolent of fresh resinous fragrance.
The wind whispered like the sound of ocean in the summit of the trees,
and a nightingale was singing gloriously in the distance. All recalled
Humfrey, and the day, thirty years back, when she had given him such sore
pain, in those very woods, grasping the shadow instead of the substance,
and taking the sunshine out of his life as well as from her own. Never
had she felt such a pang in thinking of that day, or in the vain
imagination of how it might have been!

'Yet I believe I am doing right,' she thought. 'Humfrey himself might
say that old things must pass away, and the past give place to the
present! Let me stand once more under the tree where I gave him that
answer! Shall I feel as if he would laugh at me for my shrinking, or
approve me for my resolution?'

The tree was a pinaster, of lengthy foliage and ponderous cones, standing
in a little shooting-path, leading from the main walk. She turned
towards it and stood breathless for a moment.

There stood the familiar figure--youthful, well-knit, firm, with the
open, steadfast, kindly face, but with the look of crowned exultant love
that she had only once beheld, and that when his feet were already within
the waters of the dark river. It was his very voice that exclaimed,
'Here she is!' Had her imagination indeed called up Humfrey before her,
or was he come to upbraid her with her surrender of his charge to modern
innovation! But the spell was broken, for a woodland nymph in soft gray,
edged with green, was instantly beside him, and that calmly-glad face was
no reflection of what Honora's had ever been.

'Dear, dear Miss Charlecote,' cried Phoebe, springing to her; 'we thought
you would come home this way, so we came to meet you, and were watching
both the paths.'

'Thank you, my dear,' said Hono