mbrace as they stood by the window. The
golden light was sprinkled upon the landscape, and the whole face of
nature seemed to glow with an unusual radiance, as that little band of
loving hearts beat in such grateful and perfect unison. Yet was there a
sigh in the midst of it all, for the absent and sinning one:

Worlds like to this
Mingle sorrow and bliss.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Mrs. Dunmore and Jennie were busy in talking over the past, and forming
plans for the future, when Mr. Colbert was announced.

"I trust you will excuse my early call," said he, as they arose to greet
him. "I have to leave the village at noon, which is my only apology for
intruding upon your morning hours."

"We are always at home to our old and valued friends," replied Mrs.
Dunmore. "I hope our long separation will not make us strangers to each
other."

"Miss Jennie reminds me that a long interval has come between us," said
the clergyman, glancing at the graceful and womanly figure before him;
"I have been accustomed to think of her as the child of my pleasant
rambles, so that I am scarcely prepared to meet her in another form."

Jennie had received him with that timid cordiality so common to early
womanhood, a kind of shrinking from the advances of a new and not wholly
defined stage of being, and, as he alluded to the days of her childhood
and the hours spent together in his hill-girt home, a slight blush
tinged her face, and she said, "the long interval has changed you too,
Mr. Colbert, so that there needed early memories to aid me in
recognizing you."

"Time has dealt very differently with us," replied her friend, as the
mirror opposite enabled him to contrast his sunken and pallid features
with the round and healthful face of the lovely girl. "There are many
things, however, that encourage me in the hope that we are none the less
friends than formerly, and that we still have the one great sympathy in
common;" added he, recalling her devout manner in church the day before.

"Are you not well, Mr. Colbert," asked Mrs. Dunmore; "or do you trespass
upon the hours necessary to your repose and recreation that you are so
much thinner and paler than you used to be? I fear I must usurp your
prerogative and turn preacher if you are really destroying your health
by too great devotion to your duties."

"I have been quite a sufferer for the last few years, my dear madam,"
returned the minister; "but not from the cause you assign."