edy nose in search of the grains of corn among the cobbles; to his
left a gray stone bridge over a broad light-filled river; beyond, a
little huddled village backed by and apparently built out of the great
slate quarry which represented the only industry of the neighborhood,
and a tiny towered church--the scene on the Sabbath of Mr. Mayhew's
ministrations. Beyond the village, shoulders of purple fell, and behind
the inn masses of broken crag rising at the very head of the valley into
a fine pike, along whose jagged edges the rain-clouds were trailing.
There was a little lurid storm-light on the river, but, in general,
the color was all dark and rich, the white inn gleaming on a green and
purple background. He took it all into his heart, covetously, greedily,
trying to fix it there forever.

Presently he was called in by the vicar, and found a tempting tea spread
in a light-upper room, where Agnes and Rose were already making fun of
the chromo-lithographs and rummaging the visitors' book. The scrambling,
chattering meal passed like a flash. At the beginning of it Mrs.
Thornburgh's small gray eyes had travelled restlessly from face to
face, as though to say, 'What--_no_ news yet? Nothing happened?' As
for Elsmere, though it seemed to him at the time one of the brightest
moments of existence, he remembered little afterward but the scene: the
peculiar clean mustiness of the room only just opened for the summer
season, a print of the Princess of Wales on the wall opposite him, a
stuffed fox over the mantelpiece, Rose's golden head, and heavy amber
necklace, and the figure at the vicar's right, in a gown of a little
dark blue check, the broad hat shading the white brow and luminous eyes.

When tea was over they lounged out onto the bridge. There was to be no
long lingering, however. The clouds were deepening, the rain could not
be far off. But if they started soon they could probably reach home
before it came down. Elsmere and Rose hung over the gray stone parapet,
mottled with the green and gold of innumerable mosses, and looked down
through a fringe of English maidenhair growing along the coping, into
the clear eddies of the stream. Suddenly he raised himself on one elbow,
and, shading his eyes, looked to where the vicar and Catherine were
standing in front of the inn, touched for an instant by a beam of fitful
light slipping between two great rain-clouds.

'How well that hat and dress become your sister!' he said, the wor