ld.

What a strange black gateway to have led into so fair a garden! Hazel
pauses at the entrance, her eyes glistening, her breath taken away with
delight at the beauty of the scene before her. A paradise of fresh green
shade and exquisite light and colouring. Wide-spreading chestnuts,
graceful, feathery birches, and a hundred other trees, clothed and robed
in their tender young leaves, mingle with a glory of pink and white
spring blossom, which seems to fill the air like a snowstorm in the
clear, blue sky. The South wind blows and fans Hazel's cheek, and wafts
delicious breath of flowers and sweet-brier around her. Beneath the
shower of snowy blossom stretches smooth, green grass, and masses of
brilliant flowers glow, expanding their petals up towards the sun.

After a while Hazel wanders forward in a dreamy intoxication of delight,
every moment discovering fresh beauties. She finds a beautiful grotto,
where are large rocks and cascades and running streams and fountains.
She enters by a low archway of stone, covered with drooping ferns, and
there, right before her, is a large clear pool at the foot of a huge
rock. She flushes with the prettiest of shy pleasure and frank
admiration at sight of her own reflection.

How beautiful! A girl in a long, white robe, with a sweet, dark-eyed
face, which she knows to be her own. She is leaning slightly forward,
and the eyes--so often heavy and weary--are brimming with happiness, the
lips parted in a smile. Her hair, with its pretty, sunny ripples, is
unbound, and the wind blows it slightly back from her shoulders. And,
most wonderful and striking of all, a circlet of pure gold rests upon
the shapely head, and a second circlet is clasped round the waist. Then
she is a queen? No doubt of it. And then comes, to the joy of admiration
of all she has seen, the added joy of certainty that all is her own.
This is a queen's garden, and she is the happy queen!

More and more dawns gradually upon her. There are those near at hand
dear to her, to whom she is also dear, whose queen she is. Oh the joy of
it all! She clasps her hands in ecstasy, and the pretty reflection in
the pool is more than ever lovely, only she has forgotten it now.

A serious thought must have come into Hazel's mind, for suddenly a
different expression appears in her eyes; a look of perplexity and shade
of sorrow. The consciousness in her new life is growing, and, alas! it
is not unmixed with pain. This garden is not