es around her. But the Colonel, through whose voice ran in
spite of himself an icy vein of sarcasm, observed, with another of his
low bows:

"You shall indeed be like king and queen there. If you do not believe
me, come there with me a month hence, and I will show you what a
disappointed man can do for the woman he has loved." And taking by the
arm the old man who with futile rage had tried more than once to break
into this ominous conversation, he drew him persuasively to his side,
and so by degrees from the room.

"Oh," cried Juliet, as the door closed behind them, "can he mean it?
Can he mean it?"

And Orrin, a little awed, did not reply, but I saw by his face and
bearing that whether the Colonel meant it or not was little to him;
that the cottage beyond the woods was the destined home of his bride,
and that we must be prepared to lose her from our midst, perhaps
before the month was over which the Colonel had bidden them to wait.

I do not know through whom Dame Gossip became acquainted with
yesterday's events, but everywhere in town people are laying their
heads together in wonder over the jilting of Colonel Schuyler and the
unprecedented magnanimity which he has shown in giving his new house
to the rebellious lovers. If I have been asked one question to-day, I
have been asked fifty, and Orrin, who flies into a rage at the least
intimation that he will accept the gift which has been made him,
spends most of his time in asserting his independence, and the firm
resolution which he has made to owe nothing to the generosity of the
man he has treated with such unquestionable baseness. Juliet keeps
very quiet, but from the glimpse I caught of her this afternoon at her
casement, I judge that the turn of affairs has had a very enlivening
effect upon her beauty. Her eyes fairly sparkled as she saw me; and
with something like her old joyous abandonment of manner, she tore off
a branch of the flowering almond at her window and tossed it with
delicious laughter at my feet. Yet though I picked it up and carried
it for a few steps beyond her gate, I soon dropped it over the wall,
for her sparkle and her laughter hurt me, and I would rather have seen
her less joyous and a little more sensible of the ruin she had
wrought.

For she has wrought ruin, as any one can see who looks at the Colonel
long enough to note his eye. For though he holds himself erect and
walks proudly through the town, there is that in his look which make