er sky and the glory of the autumn foliage, there
is much driving over the hills from country place to country place;
there are lawn-tennis parties on the high lawns, whence the players in
the pauses of the game can look over vast areas of lovely country;
there are open-air fetes, chance meetings at the clubhouse, chats on the
highway, walking excursions, leisurely dinners. In this atmosphere one
is on the lookout for an engagement, and a wedding here has a certain
eclat. When one speaks of Great Barrington or Stockbridge or Lenox in
the autumn, a certain idea of social position is conveyed.

Did Their Pilgrimage end on these autumn heights? To one of them, I
know, the colored landscape, the dreamy atmosphere, the unique glory
that comes in October days, were only ecstatic suggestions of the life
that opened before her. Love is victorious over any mood of nature, even
when exquisite beauty is used to heighten the pathos of decay. Irene
raved about the scenery. There is no place in the world beautiful enough
to have justified her enthusiasm, and there is none ugly enough to have
killed it.

I do not say that Irene's letters to Mr. King were entirely taken up
with descriptions of the beauty of Lenox. That young gentleman had gone
on business to Georgia. Mr. and Mrs. Benson were in Cyrusville. Irene
was staying with Mrs. Farquhar at the house of a friend. These letters
had a great deal of Lovers' Latin in them--enough to have admitted the
writer into Yale College if this were a qualification. The letters
she received were equally learned, and the fragments Mrs. Farquhar was
permitted to hear were so interrupted by these cabalistic expressions
that she finally begged to be excused. She said she did not doubt that
to be in love was a liberal education, but pedantry was uninteresting.
Latin might be convenient at this stage; but later on, for little tiffs
and reconciliations, French would be much more useful.

One of these letters southward described a wedding. The principals in it
were unknown to King, but in the minute detail of the letter there was a
personal flavor which charmed him. He would have been still more charmed
could he have seen the girl's radiant face as she dashed it off. Mrs.
Farquhar watched her with a pensive interest awhile, went behind her
chair, and, leaning over, kissed her forehead, and then with slow step
and sad eyes passed out to the piazza, and stood with her face to the
valley and the purple hi