lighted and fragrant with hot-house plants, in which a tall gentleman in evening dress and a slim girl in white found themselves for a moment alone, on the eve of the young girl's departure for her distant home. This gentleman had been very kind and pleasant to her during her month's visit. One memorable evening he had taken her to an opera, and another equally memorable time he had taken her to drive; and although both in the theatre and the park she had seen many men who were in other eyes than hers his equals in appearance and manner and all exterior points, to this young girl he had been pre-eminent. At the thought of going home she had minded most the parting with this gracious new-made friend, but, at the same time, something suggested to her that if he liked her as much as she liked him, perhaps he would say they need not part forever; and the young girl had been so utterly foolish as to think he would say so. But now he was telling her good-by, without a word of future meeting, though he took both of her hands and held them close in both of his, and asked her if she was sorry to part from him, and sought her eyes with his and made her look at him, although she was ashamed for him to see the tears that she had vainly tried to keep back. At sight of these he had drawn her closer and looked at her so tenderly that she had half believed he was going to kiss her, but just then a step was heard approaching, and he had said nothing more except good-by and gone away.
That young girl—was it herself or not herself?—had gone home the next day, with only two distinct consciousnesses in her mind,—that she was wretched, and that her father must not see her wretchedness. She had succeeded in keeping her secret very well, until there was no secret to keep. For the time was long past when she had felt herself so miserable, and now she believed herself happy. And yet this evening, more than for over a year past, she felt that she was that girl,—not an altered and radically different creature, but the same. Lately her memories of that scene had roused within her only indignant anger, and a burning sense of shame which her expanded womanhood had taught her, for having shown such feeling for a man who evidently had none at all for her, and who would only laugh at, or, worse still, pity her for it. But this evening—such tricks do our own hearts play us!—as Stella looked away across the water she seemed to see again those fond and penetrating glances; and as she listened to the rippling stream and the lullaby of the mother-birds in the branches overhead, she heard, instead of them, the tender cadence of a sweet, caressing voice, and her hands, as they tightly clasped each other, seemed conscious of a loving pressure.
Far away, across the river, beyond the most distant fields, the full moon was silently lifting itself into sight, at first but a little disk flint
