h a vague feeling of sadness.
They had life before them, a thousand dreamy delusions--a thousand
alluring hopes evanescent as the apple blossoms of May, but as sweet
also.

Mabel was too noble for envy, but these thoughts subdued her excitement
into silent mournfulness. At first, she thought to walk slowly back and
meet the young people when they landed, but something withheld her and
she sat still, dreamily watching them.

She saw the boat drifting idly upon the current. The gorgeous forest
leaves with which it was literally carpeted struck her eyes in rich
masses of colors, as if the young people had imprisoned a portion of the
sunset around their feet. She could distinguish Ben stooping forward
seemingly half asleep upon his oars. All in the boat seemed tranquil and
happy, like creatures of another life afloat upon the rivers of
paradise; she could almost see their faces--those happy faces that made
the fancy still more natural.

As she watched them a strange pain stole to her heart. She rose suddenly
to her feet, and sweeping a hand across her eyes as if to clear their
vision, cast long searching glances toward the boat, striving to read
those young faces afar off, and thus relieve her mind of a powerful
suspicion.

"Why has this thought never presented itself before?" she said with a
pang of self reproach. "Has this eternal dream blinded me, or am I now
mistaken? Poor children--poor Lina--is this cruel destiny to fall on you
also?"

The boat came drifting toward her now in the crimson light, again
enveloped in purple shadows like those fairy skiffs that glide through
our dreams. Mabel watched it till her eyes filled with tears, a strange
thing--for she was not a woman given to weeping, save as tears are
sometimes the expression of a tender or poetic thought. Pain or wrong
were things for her to endure or redress; she never wept over them.

That night the interest which she felt in these young persons blended
painfully with memories that had risen, like a sudden storm, in her
nature. She felt as if they were destined to carry forth and work out
the drama of her own life, and that this agency was just commencing. As
she stood thus wrapped in turbulent thoughts, there came through the
brushwood a crash of branches and a stir of the foliage louder than the
wind could have produced.

Mabel Harrington was in no mood for companionship. She had fled from the
house to be alone, and this approach startled her.

A