, tulips, crocuses and
amaranths. In short, the old building, moss-covered though its roof
had become, and old-fashioned as it certainly was in all its angles,
might have been mistaken for one of the most lovely nooks in Paradise,
and the delusion never regretted.

I have said that it was spring-time--the air fragrance itself--the
birds brimful of music, soft and sweet as if they had fed only upon
the apple-blossoms that hung over them for months. Yet there was no
indication that the old house was inhabited. The windows were all
closed, the doors locked, and the greensward with the high box
borders, covered with a shower of snowy leaves that had been shaken
from the fruit-trees. Still, upon a strip of earth kept moist by the
shadows from a gable, was one or two slender footprints slightly
impressed, that seemed to have been very recently left. Again they
appeared upon a narrow-pointed stoop that ran beneath the windows of a
small room in an angle of the building, and from which there was a
door slightly ajar, with the same dewy footprint broken on the
threshold. Within this room there was a sound as of some one moving
softly, yet with impatience, to and fro--once a white hand clasped
itself on the door, and a beautiful face, flushed and agitated,
glanced through the opening and disappeared. Then followed an interval
of silence, save that the birds were making the woods ring with music,
and an old honeysuckle that climbed over the stoop shook again with
the humming-birds that dashed hither and thither among its crimson
bells.

Again the door was pushed open, and now not only the face but the
tall and beautifully proportioned figure of a young girl appeared on
the threshold. She paused a moment, hesitated, as if afraid to brave
the open air, and then stepped out upon the stoop, and bending over
the railing looked eagerly toward the grove of oaks, through which a
carriage-road wound up to the broad gravel-walk that led from the back
of the dwelling.

Nothing met her eye but the soft green of the woods, and after gazing
earnestly forth during a minute or two she turned, with an air of
disappointment, and slowly passed through the door again.

The room which she entered was richly furnished, but the upright
damask chairs, the small tables of dark mahogany, and two or three
cushions that filled the window recesses, were lightly clouded with
dust, such as accumulates even in a closed room when long unoccupied.
There was