y
left court and camp to press his own suit peacefully. What a difference
he found it to be here in mid-September, far away from any knowledge
of the world and every care; only to behold the manner of the trees
disrobing, blushing with a trembling wonder at the freedom of the winds,
or in the wealth of deep wood browning into rich defiance; only to
observe the colour of the hills, and cliffs, and glens, and the glory
of the sea underneath the peace of heaven, when the balanced sun was
striking level light all over them! And if this were not enough to
make a man contented with his littleness and largeness, then to see
the freshened Pleiads, after their long dip of night, over the eastern
waters twinkling, glad to see us all once more and sparkling to be
counted.

These things, and a thousand others, which (without a waft of
knowledge or of thought on our part) enter into and become our sweetest
recollections, for the gay young lord possessed no charm, nor even
interest. "Dull, dull, how dull it is!" was all he thought when he
thought at all; and he vexed his host by asking how he could live in
such a hole as that. And he would have vexed his young love, too, if
young love were not so large of heart, by asking what the foreign tongue
was which "her people" tried to speak. "Their native tongue and mine,
my lord!" cried Frida, with the sweetness of her smile less true than
usual, because she loved her people and the air of her nativity.

However, take it altogether, this was a golden time for her. Golden
trust and reliance are the well-spring of our nature, and that man is
the happiest who is cheated every day almost. The pleasure is tenfold as
great in being cheated as to cheat. Therefore Frida was as happy as the
day and night are long. Though the trees were striped with autumn, and
the green of the fields was waning, and the puce of the heath was faded
into dingy cinamon; though the tint of the rocks was darkened by the
nightly rain and damp, and the clear brooks were beginning to be hoarse
with shivering floods, and the only flowers left were but widows of the
sun, yet she had the sovereign comfort and the cheer of trustful
love. Lord Auberley, though he cared nought for the Valley of Rocks
or Watersmeet, for beetling majesty of the cliffs or mantled curves
of Woody Bay, and though he accounted the land a wilderness and the
inhabitants savages, had taken a favourable view of the ample spread
of the inland farms and th