accidentally together the artless and the
artful. She was aware of the existence of love, but knew nothing of its
varying phases. Its language had never been breathed into her ear, and
she never dreamed of inspiring it. Could it be that it was love, which
had given such a glow and lustre to Mittie's face, which had softened
the harshness of her manners, and made her apparently accessible to
sisterly tenderness?

While she stood, contemplating the wedded initials, in a reverie so deep
as to forget where she was, she felt something fall gently on her head,
and a shower of fragrance bathed her senses. Turning suddenly round, the
first rays of the rising sun glittered on her face, and gilt the
flower-crown that rested on her brow. Clinton stood directly behind her,
and his countenance wore a very different expression from what it did
the preceding evening. And certainly it was difficult to recognize the
pale, drooping, spiritless traveler of the previous night, in the
bright, beaming, blushing, shy, wildly-sweet looking fairy of the
morning hour.

Helen was not angry, but she was unaffectedly frightened at finding
herself in such close proximity with this very oppressively handsome
young man; and without pausing to reflect on the silliness and
childishness of the act, she flew away as rapidly as a startled bird. It
seemed as if all the reminiscences of her childhood pressed home upon
her in the space of a few moments. Just as she had been arrested years
before, when fleeing from the snake that invaded her strawberry-bed, so
she found herself impeded by a restraining arm; and looking up she
beheld her friend, the young doctor, his face radiant with a thousand
glad welcomes.

"Oh! I am _so glad_ to see you once again," exclaimed Helen, yielding
involuntarily to the embrace, which being one moment withheld, only made
her heart throb with double joy.

"My sister, my Helen, my own dear pupil," said Arthur Hazleton, and the
rich glow of the morning was not deeper nor brighter than the color that
mantled his cheek. "How well and blooming you look! They told me you
were ill and could not be disturbed last night. I did not hope to see
you so brilliant in health and spirits. And who crowned you so gayly,
the fair queen of the morning?"

"I don't know," she cried, taking the chaplet from her head and shaking
the dew-drops from its leaves, "and yet I suspect it was Mr. Clinton,
who came behind me while I was standing by yonder b