s of my life with you;
to have not a fancy or a pursuit in which you cannot share, or with
which you cannot sympathise. I hope you will not grow tired of me!'

'Tired!'

Then came silence, and a long farewell kiss, and then the voice of
Maulevrier shouting in the hall, just in time to warn the lovers, before
Miss Mueller opened the door and exclaimed,

'Oh, Mr. Hammond, we have been looking for you _everywhere_. The luggage
is all in the carriage, and Maulevrier says there is only just time to
get to Windermere!'

In another minute or so the carriage was driving down the hill; and Mary
stood in the porch looking after the travellers.

'It seems as if it is my fate to stand here and see everybody drive
away,' she said to herself.

And then she looked round at the lovely gardens, bright with spring
flowers, the trees glorious with their young, fresh foliage, and the
vast panorama of hill and dale, and felt that it was a wicked thing to
murmur in the midst of such a world. And she remembered the great
unhoped-for bliss that had come to her within the last four days, and
the cloud upon her brow vanished, as she clasped her hands in child-like
joyousness.

'God bless you, dear old Helvellyn,' she exclaimed, looking up at the
sombre crest of the mountain. 'Perhaps if it had not been for you he
would have never proposed.'

But she was obliged to dismiss this idea instantly; for to suppose John
Hammond's avowal of his love an accident, the mere impulse of a weak
moment, would be despair. Had he not told her how she had grown nearer
and nearer to his heart, day by day, and hour by hour, until she had
become part of his life? He had told her this--he, in whom she believed
as in the very spirit of truth.

She wandered about the gardens for an hour after the carriage had
started for Windermere, revisiting every spot where she and her lover
had walked together within the last three days, living over again the
rapture of those hours, repeating to herself his words, recalling his
looks, with the fatuity of a first girlish love. And yet amidst the
silliness inseparable from love's young dream, there was a depth of true
womanly feeling, thoughtful, unselfish, forecasting a future which was
not to travel always along the primrose path of dalliance--a future in
which the roses were not always to be thornless.

John Hammond was going to London to work for a position in the world, to
strive and labour among the seething mass of