ing, a wonderfully cultivated human plant--that
she must have given him many ideas and images. It was impossible to be
more pencilled, more garden-like, more delicately tinted and petalled.

If I had had it in my heart to think Ambient a little of a hypocrite
for appearing to forget at table everything he had said to me during our
walk, I should instantly have cancelled such a judgment, on reflecting
that the good news his wife was able to give him about their little
boy was reason enough for his sudden air of happiness. It may have come
partly, too, from a certain remorse at having complained to me of the
fair lady who sat there,--a desire to show me that he was after all
not so miserable. Dolcino continued to be much better, and he had been
promised he should come downstairs after he had had his dinner. As soon
as we had risen from our own meal Ambient slipped away, evidently for
the purpose of going to his child; and no sooner had I observed this
than I became aware that his wife had simultaneously vanished. It
happened that Miss Ambient and I, both at the same moment, saw the tail
of her dress whisk out of a doorway, which led the young lady to smile
at me, as if I now knew all the secrets of the Ambients. I passed with
her into the garden, and we sat down on a dear old bench which rested
against the west wall of the house. It was a perfect spot for the middle
period of a Sunday in June, and its felicity seemed to come partly from
an antique sun-dial which, rising in front of us and forming the centre
of a small, intricate parterre, measured the moments ever so slowly, and
made them safe for leisure and talk. The garden bloomed in the suffused
afternoon, the tall beeches stood still for an example, and, behind and
above us, a rose-tree of many seasons, clinging to the faded grain of
the brick, expressed the whole character of the place in a familiar,
exquisite smell. It seemed to me a place for genius to have every
sanction, and not to encounter challenges and checks. Miss Ambient asked
me if I had enjoyed my walk with her brother, and whether we had talked
of many things.

"Well, of most things," I said, smiling, though I remembered that we had
not talked of Miss Ambient.

"And don't you think some of his theories are very peculiar?"

"Oh, I guess I agree with them all." I was very particular, for Miss
Ambient's entertainment, to guess.

"Do you think art is everything?" she inquired in, a moment.

"In art, o