"Perhaps you need change," said the widow; "it is not well to confine
one's self too constantly to one locality."

"I feel confident it is so," said Mr. Colbert, "since even so short a
journey revives me materially; but how comes it," he asked, "that you
are here, and apparently settled?"

"Jennie must explain that to you," replied Mrs. Dunmore, "as it was
through her that our present arrangements were made."

"Ah! do you find a rural life so much more congenial than your city home
that you have adopted it altogether?" said Mr. Colbert, addressing
Jennie.

"It is not that," she replied, "the city was the scene of my happiest,
as well as my saddest days, and we are soon to return to it; but this
village is the home of my nearest relatives, who were restored to me a
few years since through a singular Providence, and my grandfather's
infirmities rendered it expedient that we should remain here until now."

Mrs. Dunmore seeing the tears that dropped upon her child's work at
mention of her grandfather, took Mr. Colbert aside, and gave him a brief
history of all that had occurred during the years of their severance,
and when she had finished her relation of the old man's derangement, and
of Jennie's devotion and love toward him, the minister arose, and walked
backward and forward in the room with an absorbed and meditative air,
and then stopping so suddenly before the young girl as to startle her,
he said abruptly: "Will you give me one moment in the garden? I have a
single word to say to you alone." Jennie laid aside her work, and as
they stepped from the colonnade into the garden of their lodgings, she
opened an adjoining wicket that led to her uncle's grounds, and,
motioning Mr. Colbert to follow, she passed through and entered the
little summer-house.

"Are we quite free from intrusion?" asked her companion, as she seated
herself upon a bench near the window.

"I believe I reign sole monarch of this sequestered nook at this
season," replied Jennie. "My cousins care little for such solitude now
that the breeze is chilly and the flowers have vanished."

"Jennie," said her friend, leaning against a pillow as if for support,
"if you knew that all my suffering for the last few years had been for
you, that this change, and pallor, and thinness, were all occasioned by
the fear that the time might never come when I could tell you that I
love you, you would pardon such a hasty declaration of my feelings
toward you. You