h cloaks--oh! but once to see and hear it! The very
rudeness of Mrs. Martha's words, so often repeated, gave her a feeling
in favour of their object. She had known Mrs. Martha unjust before.
Poor Tom! if he had only been a Spaniard, he would have sung about the
white dove--his pretty thought--in a serenade, but then he might have
poignarded Mr. James in his passion, which would have been less
agreeable--she supposed he had forgotten her long ago--and so much the
better!

It was a Sunday evening. Every one was gone to church except
Charlotte, who was left to keep house. Though November, it was not
cold, the day had been warm and showery, and the full moon had risen in
the most glorious brightness, riding in a sky the blue of which looked
almost black by contrast with her brilliancy. Charlotte stood at the
back door, gazing at the moon walking in brightness, and wandered into
the garden, to enjoy what to her was beyond all other delights, reading
Gessner's Death of Abel by moonlight. There was quite sufficient
light, even if she had not known the idyll almost by heart; and in a
trance of dreamy, undefined delight, she stood beside the dark
ivy-covered wall, each leaf glistening in the moonbeams, which shed a
subdued pearliness over her white apron and collar, paled but gave a
shadowy refinement to her features, and imparted a peculiar soft golden
gloss to the fair braids of hair on her modest brow.

A sound of opening the back gate made her give one of her violent
starts; but before she could spring into the shelter of the house, she
was checked by the civil words, 'I beg your pardon, I was mistaken--I
took this for No. 8.'

'Three doors off--' began Charlotte, discovering, with a shy thrill of
surprise and pleasure, that she had been actually accosted by the great
Mr. Delaford; and the moonlight, quite as becoming to him as to her,
made him an absolute Italian count, tall, dark, pale, and whiskered.
He did not go away at once, he lingered, and said softly, 'I perceive
that you partake my own predilection for the moonlight hour.'

Charlotte would have been delighted, had it not been a great deal
harder to find an answer than if the old Lord had asked her a question;
but she simpered and blushed, which probably did just as well. Mr.
Delaford supposed she knew the poet's lines--

'How sweet the moonlight sleeps on yonder bank--'

'Oh yes, sir--so sweet!' exclaimed the Lady of Eschalott, under her
breath,