with an air of satisfaction,
and whispered with an insinuating smile, "I go with _you_ to-day; see,
there is another guide for Mademoiselle"? He was mistaken. It was my
young friend whom he was, on this occasion, destined to escort over the
mountain. He was as devoted to her as if she had been the apple of his
eye. Whether I followed next in the file, brought up the rear, or was
dashed over the precipice, I doubt if he looked behind him to discover.
Was I fool enough, then, to trust his professions? I acknowledge the
weakness. I was but a novice, he a practised courtier in the guise of a
mountaineer. To make a clean breast of it, I even suspect that his
self-gratulatory whisper is still ringing in my ear, for I find that
Mademoiselle and I are rivals in our devotion to Michel.

And Ann Harris, of Honeybourne, widow, portress of the ancient
village-church, surrounded by villagers' graves, approached by four
foot-paths over four stiles, perfect model of all the churches in all
the novels of English literature,--was it partiality for me, ancient
matron, or an eye to a silver sixpence, which made you, and makes you
still, the heroine of my day of romance? At any rate, I shall never
cease to invoke a blessing on that immaculate railway-company which
decoyed me from London into the heart of England, and, with a coolness
unexampled in the new districts of Iowa, dropped me at the sweetest nook
under the sun, there to wait three hours for the train which should have
taken me at once to Stratford,--three golden hours, in which I might
bask like a bee in a Honeybourne beyond my hopes.

Not that my Honeybourne was precisely the spot where the railway-train
left me standing deserted and alone,--alone save for a Stratford
furniture-dealer, who, unceremoniously set down in the midst of his new
stock of tables and chairs, and with nothing else in sight but a
platform, a shed, and me, looked at the last-mentioned object for
sympathy, while he cursed the departing train and swore the usual oath
of vengeance, namely, that he would never travel that road again.

_He_ got red with passion and cursed the road; _I_ stared round me and
kept cool. Was I more philosophical than he? No, but there was this
difference: he was bent on business, I on pleasure; he was in a hurry, I
could afford to wait.

Three hours,--and only a platform, a shed, and an infuriated
furniture-dealer to keep me company! This was the Honeybourne station,
but not Hone