edestined way. I hope you don't think it a case
of the Lord of Burleigh over again? It is only a cottage, Bluebell; but I
think it is comfortable, and one mercy is no one will be able to find us
here!"

The extreme advantage of this isolation scarcely seemed so apparent to
her; and as the above sentence was the only connected or rational one
Harry gave utterance to, conversation, properly so called, was _nil_
during the drive. After skirting a hanging wood, and passing some water
meadows, where red Herefordshire cows with white faces grazed under the
low wintry sky, they drove through a primitive village, and, turning down
a bye-road, drew up at a queer gabled cottage. It was very picturesque
and odd-looking, and Harry, during his last leave home, had spent a night
there on a visit to an artist friend, who was making sketches in the
neighbourhood.

Its proprietor, a carpenter, sometimes lived in it, and sometimes was
able to let it to gentlemen coming down to fish in the river. On
receiving Dutton's telegram, he and his wife, who had given up all hopes
of letting it for the winter, gladly laid down their best carpets,
brought out their summer chintzes, and arranged everything in apple-pie
order, for the cottage was taken for a month certain.

Harry had not forgotten to order a piano to be hired from the nearest
town. After their long journey it all looked very home-like and
attractive. They ran about the house like two children, examining
everything. The sitting-room was the prettiest, with its two bay-windows
at right-angles, low roof and rafters. The artist had gone abroad, and
had left some of his pictures on the wall in charge of the carpenter--a
bewitched Greuze, copied in the Louvre; the inevitable study of a
bird's-nest and primroses; a girl standing at a wash-tub by an open
window, on the sill of which outside leaned an Irish peasant, with his
handsome, blarneying face. Then there were sketches taken in the
neighbourhood. "I remember this one half finished on his easel," said
Harry. It was a glade of a forest; in the fore-ground a huge oak,
knee-deep in bracken, and tall blue hyacinths. "Look Bluebell, here is
your name-sake flower."

"Oh, that is it! Well, I never saw one before; we have none in Canada."

"I wish it were June now," said Harry; "summer weather is what this place
wants;" and he glanced out of the bay-window looking on a lawn, with a
spreading cedar encircled by a seat. Some pinched chrysanth