ch other from the first, though for
a while we said no word of love. Day by day I went about the place with
her, accompanied by little Tota and Hendrika only, while she attended
to the thousand and one matters which her father's ever-growing weakness
had laid upon her; or rather, as time drew on, I attended to the
business, and she accompanied me. All day through we were together. Then
after supper, when the night had fallen, we would walk together in the
garden and come at length to hear her father read aloud sometimes from
the works of a poet, sometimes from history. Or, if he did not feel
well, Stella would read, and when this was done, Mr. Carson would
celebrate a short form of prayer, and we would separate till the morning
once more brought our happy hour of meeting.

So the weeks went by, and with every week I grew to know my darling
better. Often, I wonder now, if my fond fancy deceives me, or if indeed
there are women as sweet and dear as she. Was it solitude that had given
such depth and gentleness to her? Was it the long years of communing
with Nature that had endowed her with such peculiar grace, the grace we
find in opening flowers and budding trees? Had she caught that murmuring
voice from the sound of the streams which fall continually about her
rocky home? was it the tenderness of the evening sky beneath which she
loved to walk, that lay like a shadow on her face, and the light of the
evening stars that shone in her quiet eyes? At the least to me she was
the realization of that dream which haunts the sleep of sin-stained men;
so my memory paints her, so I hope to find her when at last the sleep
has rolled away and the fevered dreams are done.

At last there came a day--the most blessed of my life, when we told our
love. We had been together all the morning, but after dinner Mr. Carson
was so unwell that Stella stopped in with him. At supper we met again,
and after supper, when she had put little Tota, to whom she had grown
much attached, to bed, we went out, leaving Mr. Carson dozing on the
couch.

The night was warm and lovely, and without speaking we walked up the
garden to the orange grove and sat down upon a rock. There was a little
breeze which shook the petals of the orange blooms over us in showers,
and bore their delicate fragrance far and wide. Silence reigned around,
broken only by the sound of the falling waterfalls that now died to a
faint murmur, and now, as the wavering breeze turned, boom