, as you may see. He's pretty well off, and, by one little end or
the other, contrives to make it look smarter and smarter every year; but
then he's just as close as a corkscrew, and quite mean in his ways.
And--there's Kate, 'squire, looking from the window. Now, ain't she a
sweet creature? Come, 'light--you shall see her close. Make yourself
quite at home, as I do. I make free, for you see the old people have all
along looked upon me as a son, seeing that I am to be one at some time
or other."

They were now at the entrance of as smiling a cottage as the lover of
romance might well desire to look upon. Everything had a cheery,
sunshiny aspect, looking life, comfort, and the "all in all content;"
and, with a feeling of pleasure kindled anew in his bosom by the
prospect, Ralph complied readily with the frank and somewhat informal
invitation of his companion, and was soon made perfectly at home by the
freedom and ease which characterized the manners of the young girl who
descended to receive them. A slight suffusion of the cheek and a
downcast eye, upon the entrance of her lover, indicated a gratified
consciousness on the part of the maiden which did not look amiss. She
was seemingly a gentle, playful creature, extremely young, apparently
without a thought of guile, and altogether untouched with a solitary
presentiment of the unhappy fortunes in store for her.

Her mother, having made her appearance, soon employed the youth in
occasional discourse, which furnished sufficient opportunity to the
betrothed to pursue their own conversation, in a quiet corner of the
same room, in that under-tone which, where lovers are concerned, is of
all others the most delightful and emphatic. True love is always timid:
he, too, as well as fear, is apt to "shrink back at the sound himself
has made." His words are few and the tones feeble. He throws his
thoughts into his eyes, and they speak enough for all his purposes. On
the present occasion, however, he was dumb from other influences, and
the hesitating voice, the guilty look, the unquiet manner, sufficiently
spoke, on the part of her lover, what his own tongue refused to whisper
in the ears of the maiden. He strove, but vainly, to relate the
melancholy event to which we have already sufficiently alluded. His
words were broken and confused, but she gathered enough, in part, to
comprehend the affair, though still ignorant of the precise actors and
sufferers.

The heart of Katharine was