had escaped from the room. She had no wish to spend the
afternoon in the dim parlour, stuffy with stove heat and the lingering
aroma of baked mutton; and a fancy had occurred to her to wander through
the wood she had last traversed with the sole occupant of her
ill-regulated mind.

Trove, now a well-to-do and unabashed dog, rolled and kicked on his back
in puppy-like ecstacy as he watched her dress, and officiously brought
her her muff, which, however, he objected to resigning. Trove was
Bluebell's confidant and the repository of her woes, and perhaps as safe
a one as young ladies generally choose.

Not a sign of the Rollestons had she seen since her arrival at the
cottage ten days ago. Bluebell thought she could not have been more cut
off from them if she had crossed the Atlantic instead of the Common.
Going to the Rink would have too much the appearance of seeking Du
Meresq, so she rigorously avoided that; but even in King Street, where
Cecil's cutter flashed most days, she never caught sight of "Wings'"
owl-decorated head.

There was a great deal of her father's disposition in Bluebell, and she
chafed at the monotony of days so grey and eventless, and longed for she
knew not what; so that it was life, movement, _pain_ even, to exhaust
those new springs of thought and feeling that the awakening touch of a
first love had called forth, and would not now be laid.

Bluebell, like most Canadians, had had plenty of early admiration from
hobbledehoys, who made honest, though ungainly, love to her; but her
heart would as soon have been touched by an amorous Orson as by these
youthful tyros in the art. Du Meresq had that deceptive countenance
apparently created for the shipwreck of female hearts. Sometimes men
called him an ugly fellow, but no woman ever thought so. There was
expression enough in those luminous eyes to have set up three beauty men.
They could look both demoniacal and seraphic,--tender often, but scarcely
ever true; add to this a magnificent _physique_, a soft manner, a winning
voice, and, what gave him an almost superstitious interest to women, that
_fey_ look attributed to the Stewarts. He had read and studied hard by
fits and starts, for whatever possessed his mind he always pursued with
ardour, and to Cecil was fond of inveighing against his useless,
unsatisfying life. In spite of her infatuation, though, she judged him
more truly than most people, and perceived that his fitful remorse was
chiefly occas