my dull
consciousness did not awaken till an hour ago, my heart tells me
that I have loved you ever since I first saw you standing near
this spot. I am not going to ask you now whether you love me, or
ever can learn to love me. It is happiness enough for me to-day
to know how much I love you, and to know that I have told you of
that love. I do not care to have my dream too rudely and too
suddenly dispelled. Very probably you do not care for me as I
should like to have you care for me, but do not make a jest of my
affection. I am wholly aware of the preposterousness of my
demands in many respects"--this sounded very conventional and
commonplace, but every lover must say it--"and, believe me, I
shudder when I think of what I have dared confess."

Then she said with the most delightful demureness: "Mr. Stanhope,
is it likely that a girl would sit in a burying-ground on a bench
with a gentleman, allowing him to hold both her hands, unless she
cared for him a little--just a little?"

Up to this moment I had fairly forgotten that I was depriving her
of all power of resistance, but with such encouragement I took an
even more sympathetic grasp and sat a trifle closer, while the
minutes ticked away. A robin flew down from the tree near by and
saucily hopped toward us, until at a rebuking call from his mate
he flew away, and I fancied that I could hear them talking over
the situation, and drawing conclusions from their own happiness.
Phyllis was the first to break the charming spell.

"Mr. Stanhope," she asked, hardly above a whisper, "what did Aunt
Mary say when you told her that you wished to make me your
wife?"

"She said, Phyllis, that Providence may have decreed that I am
the man to bring you happiness."

And still in that same enchanting whisper, with her face a little
rosier, as she half hid it below my shoulder: "Mr. Stanhope, do
you think that a girl with my Christian training could fly in the
face of Providence?"

The philosopher was in love. It comes, I have no doubt, to every
well-ordered man to be in love once. Some there are who maintain,
with plausibility, that the passion we call love may be of
frequent recurrence, and they point to the passing fancies of
boys and girls, the romances of moonlight, the repeated sighings
of the fickle Corydon, and the matrimonial entanglements of the
aging Lydia, as evidence for their argument. That there are
varying degrees of the ecstatic emotion cannot be truthfu