“Oh, darling, I can scarcely believe it.” she murmured, smiling, and gazing up with her large soft eyes into his, “it seems to me like heaven, that I can look, and speak, and say everything without danger, or any more concealment, and always have my Ry with me—never to be separated again, you know, darling, while we live.”

“Poor little woman,” said he, fondly, looking down with an answering smile, “she does love me a little bit, I think.”

“And Ry loves his poor little bird, doesn’t he?”

“Adores her—idolatry—idolatry.”

“And we’ll be so happy!”

“I hope so, darling.”

“Hope ?” echoed she, chilled, and a little piteously.

“I’m sure of it, darling—quite certain,” he repeated, laughing tenderly; “she’s such a foolish little bird, one must watch their phrases; but I was only thinking—I’m afraid you hardly know what a place this Carwell is.”

“Oh, darling, you forget I’ve seen it—the most picturesque spot I eyer saw—the very place I should have chosen—and any place you know, with you I But that’s an old story.”

His answer was a kiss, and—

“Darling, I can never deserve half your love.”

“All I desire on earth is to live alone with my Ry.”

“Yes, darling, we’ll make out life very well here, I’m sure—my only fear is for you. I’ll go out with my rod, and bring you home my basket full of trout, or sometimes take my gun, and kill a hare or a rabbit, and we’ll live like the old Baron and his daughters in the fairy-tale—on the produce of the streams, and solitudes about us—quite to ourselves; and I’ll read to you in the evenings, or we’ll play chess, or we’ll chat while you work, and I’ll tell you stories of my travels, and you’ll sing me a song, won’t you ?

“Too delighted—singing for joy,” said little Alice, in a rapture at his story of the life that was opening to them, “oh, tell more.”

“Well—yes—and you’ll have such pretty flowers.”

“Oh, yes—flowers—I love them—not expensive ones—for we are poor, you know; and you’ll see how prudent I’ll be—but annuals, they are so cheap—and I’ll sow them myself, and I’ll have the most beautiful you ever saw. Don’t you love them, Ry?”

“Nothing so pretty, darling, on earth, except yourself.”

“What is my Ry looking out for?”

Charles Fairfield had more than once put his head out of the window, looking as well as he could along the road in advance of the horses.

“Oh, nothing of any consequence, I only wanted to see that our man had got on with the horse, he might as well knock up the old woman, and see that things were, I was going to say, comfortable, but less miserable than they might be.”

He laughed faintly as he said this, and he looked at his watch, as if he did not want her to see him consult it, and then he said—

“Well, and you were saying—oh—about the flowers—annuals—Yes.”

And so they resumed. But somehow it seemed to Alice that his ardour and his gaiety were subsiding, that his thoughts were away, and pale care stealing over him like the chill of death. Again she might have remembered the ghostly Wilhelm, who grew more ominous and spectral as he and his bride neared the goal of their nocturnal journey.

“I don’t think you hear me, Ry, and something has gone wrong,” she said at last in a tone of disappointment, that rose even to alarm.

“Oh! tell me, Charlie, if there is anything you have not told me yet? you’re afraid of frightening me.”

“Nothing, nothing, I assure you, darling; what nonsense you do talk, you poor foolish little bird. No, I mean nothing, but I’ve had a sort of quarrel with the old man; you need not have written that letter, or at least it would have been better if you had told me about it.”

“But, darling, I couldn’t, I had no opportunity, and I could not leave Wyvern, where he had been so good to me all my life, without a few words to thank him—and to entreat his pardon; you’re not angry, darling, with your poor little bird?”

“Angry, my foolish little wife, you little know your Ry; he loves his bird too well to be ever angry with her for anything, but it was unlucky, at least his getting it just when he did, for, you may suppose, it did not-improve his temper.”

“Very angry, I’m afraid, was he? But though he’s so fi............