s conquest of fame,
dating from this day--this day"--and in his turn he halted, looked round
on the sunlit landscape, and breathed deep, as if to drink into his soul
all of the earth's joy and beauty which his gaze could compass and the
arch of the horizon bound.

"They who knew her even the best," resumed the artist, striding on,
"even her aunt, never could guess how serious and earnest, under all
her infantine prettiness of fancy, is that girl's real nature. We were
walking along the brook-side, when I began to tell how solitary the
world would be to me if I could not win her to my side; while I spoke
she had turned aside from the path we had taken, and it was not till we
were under the shadow of the church in which we shall be married that
she uttered the word that gives to every cloud in my fate the silver
lining; implying thus how solemnly connected in her mind was the thought
of love with the sanctity of religion."

Kenelm shuddered,--the church, the burial-ground, the old Gothic tomb,
the flowers round the infant's grave!

"But I am talking a great deal too much about myself," resumed the
artist. "Lovers are the most consummate of all egotists, and the
most garrulous of all gossips. You have wished me joy on my destined
nuptials, when shall I wish you joy on yours? Since we have begun to
confide in each other, you are in my debt as to a confidence."

They had now gained the bridge. Kenelm turned round abruptly, "Good-day;
let us part here. I have nothing to confide to you that might not seem
to your ears a mockery when I wish you joy." So saying, so obeying in
spite of himself the anguish of his heart, Kenelm wrung his companion's
hand with the force of an uncontrollable agony, and speeded over the
bridge before Melville recovered his surprise.

The artist would have small claim to the essential attribute of
genius--namely, the intuitive sympathy of passion with passion--if that
secret of Kenelm's which he had so lightly said "he had acquired the
right to learn," was not revealed to him as by an electric flash. "Poor
fellow!" he said to himself pityingly; "how natural that he should fall
in love with Fairy! but happily he is so young, and such a philosopher,
that it is but one of those trials through which, at least ten times a
year, I have gone with wounds that leave not a scar."

Thus soliloquizing, the warm-blooded worshipper of Nature returned
homeward, too blest in the triumph of his own love to feel m