could not help feeling some embarrassment when
she met her step-mother at the breakfast-table, but the lady herself was
not in the least disconcerted; she was polite and courteous, but calm
and cold. There was a barrier around her which Mittie felt that she
could not pass, and she was uncomfortable in the position in which she
had placed herself.

And thus time went on--thus the golden opportunities of youth fled.
Helen was still at school; Louis at college. But when Louis graduated,
he came home, accompanied by a classmate whose name was Bryant
Clinton--and his coming was an event in that quiet neighborhood. When
Louis announced to his father that he was going to bring with him a
young friend and fellow collegian, Mr. Gleason was unprepared for the
reception of the dashing and high bred young gentleman who appeared as
his guest.

Mittie happened to be standing on the rustic bridge, near the celebrated
bleaching ground of Miss Thusa, when her brother and his friend arrived.
She was no lover of nature, and there was nothing in the bland, dewy
stillness of declining day to woo her abroad amid the glories of a
summer's sunset. But from that springing arch, she could look up the
high road and see the dust glimmering like particles of gold, telling
that life had been busy there--and sometimes, as at the present moment,
when something unusually magnificent presented itself to the eye, she
surrendered herself to the pleasure of admiration. There had been heavy,
dun, rolling clouds all the latter part of the day, and when the sun
burst forth behind them, he came with the touch of Midas,
instantaneously transmuting every thing into gold. The trunks of the
trees were changed to the golden pillars of an antique temple, the
foliage was all powdered with gold, here and there deepening into a
bronze, and sweeping round those pillars in folds of gorgeous tapestry.
The windows of the distant houses were all gleaming like molten gold;
and every blade of grass was tipped with the same glittering fluid.
Mittie had never beheld any thing so gloriously beautiful. She stood
leaning against the light railing, unconscious that she herself was
bathed in the same golden light--that it quivered in the dark waves of
her hair, and gilt the roses of her glowing cheek. She did not know how
bright and resplendent she looked, when two horsemen appeared in the
high road, gathering around them in quivers the glittering arrows
darting from the sky. As t