e you thus, with your hair wildly
flowing, your scarf loose and disordered."

"Thank you," I exclaimed, my thoughts coming to the surface, and resting
there with shame. I had forgotten that my bonnet was in my hand, that my
comb had fallen, leaving my hair loose and dishevelled. Gathering up its
length, and twisting it in thick folds around my head, I confined it
with my bonnet, and smoothing my thin scarf, I took his arm in silence,
and walked on through the purple gloom of twilight that deepened before
us. Slight shivers ran through my frame. The dampness of the grave-yard
clung to me, and the night dews were beginning to fall.

"Are you cold, Gabriella?" he asked, folding my light mantle more
closely round me. "You are not sufficiently protected from the dewy air.
You are weary and chill. You do not lean on me. You do not confide in
me."

"In whom should I confide, then? Without father, brother, or protector,
in whom should I confide, if ungrateful and untrusting I turn from you?"

As I said this, I suffered my arm to rest more firmly on his, for my
steps were indeed weary, and we were now ascending the hill. My heart
was deeply touched by his kindness, and the involuntary ejaculations he
uttered, the involuntary caresses he bestowed, when he believed me
perfectly unconscious, were treasured sacredly there. We were now by the
large elm-tree that shaded the way-side, beneath whose boughs I had so
often paused to gaze on the valley below. Without speaking, he led me to
this resting-place, and we both looked back, as wayfarers are wont to do
when they stop in an ascending path.

Calmly the shadows rested on the landscape, softly yet darkly they
rolled down the slope of the neighboring hills and the distant
mountains. In thin curlings, the gray smoke floated upwards and lay
slumberously among the fleecy clouds. Here and there a mansion, lifted
above the rest, shed from its glowing windows the reflection of
departing day. Bright on the dusky gold of the west the evening-star
shone and throbbed, like a pure love-thought in the heart of night; and,
dimly glimmering above the horizon, the giant pen seemed writing the
Mene Tekel of my clouded destiny on the palace walls of heaven.

As we thus stood, lifted above the valley, involved in shadows, silent
and alone, I could hear the beating of my heart, louder and louder in
the breathing stillness.

"Gabriella!" said Ernest, in a low voice, and that _master-chord_ which
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