sation a few moments, the
elderly lady and her ecclesiastical companion entered. The young girl
sauntered slowly to the steps of the terrace, and leaning against a huge
vase as she looked over the garden, seemed lost in contemplation. Her
face was turned towards the wood, but in quite another direction from
where he stood.

There was something so gentle, refined, and graceful in her figure, yet
dominated by a girlish youthfulness of movement and gesture, that Alkali
Dick was singularly interested. He had probably never seen an ingenue
before; he had certainly never come in contact with a girl of that caste
and seclusion in his brief Parisian experience. He was sorely tempted
to leave his hedge and try to obtain a nearer view of her. There was a
fringe of lilac bushes running from the garden up the slope; if he could
gain their shadows, he could descend into the garden. What he should do
after his arrival he had not thought; but he had one idea--he knew not
why--that if he ventured to speak to her he would not be met with the
abrupt rustic terror he had experienced at the hands of the servants.
SHE was not of that kind! He crept through the hedge, reached the
lilacs, and began the descent softly and securely in the shadow. But at
the same moment she arose, called in a youthful voice towards the open
window, and began to descend the steps. A half-expostulating reply
came from the window, but the young girl answered it with the laughing,
capricious confidence of a spoiled child, and continued her way into the
garden. Here she paused a moment and hung over a rose-tree, from which
she gathered a flower, afterwards thrust into her belt. Dick paused,
too, half-crouching, half-leaning over a lichen-stained, cracked stone
pedestal from which the statue had long been overthrown and forgotten.

To his surprise, however, the young girl, following the path to the
lilacs, began leisurely to ascend the hill, swaying from side to side
with a youthful movement, and swinging the long stalk of a lily at her
side. In another moment he would be discovered! Dick was frightened; his
confidence of the moment before had all gone; he would fly,--and yet, an
exquisite and fearful joy kept him motionless. She was approaching him,
full and clear in the moonlight. He could see the grace of her delicate
figure in the simple white frock drawn at the waist with broad satin
ribbon, and its love-knots of pale blue ribbons on her shoulders; he
could see