into a conviction that Rebecca would finally add her consent to his own.
Such was the state of the dwellers at the old house at the time when our tale commences.
Clinton, the morning his daughter bent over his feverish slumber, slept longer than usual, and was proportionably refreshed; and when Rebecca tempted him, in the afternoon, to the rustic seat beneath the sycamore—the pleasant shade around them, the bright sunshine elsewhere, the hum of the bees in the honied branches over-head, the chirping of the numerous birds, the gay colours of the flowers, almost unconsciously exerted a cheering influence; and their thoughts, though not glad, were at least placid and soothing. The lawn,—if lawn it could still be called, which had long lost the pristine smoothness of the once velvet turf, and was now covered with a multitude of daisies—signs, they say, of a poor soil, though it is, at all events, a cheerful poverty,—commanded a view of the adjacent country; and the road, varied by many a gentle undulation, wound through the hedge-girdled fields, some green with grass, others shining with the first yellow of the corn, and here and there an unenclosed nook where grew two or three stately elms.
Suddenly Rebecca's quick eye caught sight of a dark figure on one of the heights in the distance.
"How vexatious!" was her hasty exclamation; "here is Mr. Vernon coming to interrupt us!"
"I would, my child," replied Clinton mourn-
