e white hands more tightly in his own, and
whispered sweet words to her that brought a bright flush to her face and
a love light to her eyes. She drooped her head with the coy, pretty
shyness of a bird, listening to words that seemed to her all poetry and
music.

It was a pretty love scene. The lovers stood at the end of an
old-fashioned orchard; the fruit hung ripe on the trees--golden-brown
pears and purple plums, the grass under foot was thick and soft, the sun
had set, the dew was falling, and the birds had gone to rest.

The girl, standing under the trees, with downcast, blushing face and
bright, clear eyes, was lovely as a poet's dream. She was not more than
seventeen, and looked both young and childlike for that age. She had a
face fair as a summer's morning, radiant with youth and happiness.
Greuze might have painted her and immortalized her. She had a delicate
color that was like the faint flush one sees inside a rose. She had eyes
of the same beautiful blue as the purple heartsease, and great masses of
golden-brown hair that fell in rich waves on her neck and shoulders.

She was patrician from the crown of her dainty head to the little feet;
the slender, girlish figure was full of grace and symmetry, the white,
rounded throat and beautiful shoulders were fit models for a sculptor.
She had pretty white hands, with a soft, rose-leaf flush on the fingers.
She was a lovely girl, fair, high-bred and elegant, and she gave promise
of a most superb and magnificent womanhood. Such was Marion Arleigh on
this June evening. The young man by her side was handsome after a
certain style; the impression his face left upon every one was that he
was not to be trusted; his dark eyes were not frank and clear, the thin
lips were shrewd, with lines about them that betokened cruelty; it was a
face from which children shrank instinctively, and women as a rule did
not love. They stood side by side under the shade of an elder tree.
Plainly as patrician was written on her beautiful face and figure,
plebeian was imprinted on his. He was tall, but there was no high-bred
grace, no ease of manner, no courteous dignity such as distinguishes the
true English gentleman. His face expressed passion, but half a dozen
meaner emotions were there as well. None were perceptible to the girl by
his side. She thought him perfection and nothing else.

How comes Marion Arleigh, the heiress of Hanton, ward of Lord Ridsdale,
one of the proudest men in En