o Briarmains before the blush of
sunset should quite have faded in heaven, or the path up the fields have
become thoroughly moist with evening dew.

The lady and her daughters being gone, Caroline felt that she also ought
to resume her scarf, kiss her cousin's cheek, and trip away homeward. If
she lingered much later dusk would draw on, and Fanny would be put to
the trouble of coming to fetch her. It was both baking and ironing day
at the rectory, she remembered--Fanny would be busy. Still, she could
not quit her seat at the little parlour window. From no point of view
could the west look so lovely as from that lattice with the garland of
jessamine round it, whose white stars and green leaves seemed now but
gray pencil outlines--graceful in form, but colourless in tint--against
the gold incarnadined of a summer evening--against the fire-tinged blue
of an August sky at eight o'clock p.m.

Caroline looked at the wicket-gate, beside which holly-oaks spired up
tall. She looked at the close hedge of privet and laurel fencing in the
garden; her eyes longed to see something more than the shrubs before
they turned from that limited prospect. They longed to see a human
figure, of a certain mould and height, pass the hedge and enter the
gate. A human figure she at last saw--nay, two. Frederick Murgatroyd
went by, carrying a pail of water; Joe Scott followed, dangling on his
forefinger the keys of the mill. They were going to lock up mill and
stables for the night, and then betake themselves home.

"So must I," thought Caroline, as she half rose and sighed.

"This is all folly--heart-breaking folly," she added. "In the first
place, though I should stay till dark there will be no arrival; because
I feel in my heart, Fate has written it down in to-day's page of her
eternal book, that I am not to have the pleasure I long for. In the
second place, if he stepped in this moment, my presence here would be a
chagrin to him, and the consciousness that it must be so would turn half
my blood to ice. His hand would, perhaps, be loose and chill if I put
mine into it; his eye would be clouded if I sought its beam. I should
look up for that kindling, something I have seen in past days, when my
face, or my language, or my disposition had at some happy moment pleased
him; I should discover only darkness. I had better go home."

She took her bonnet from the table where it lay, and was just fastening
the ribbon, when Hortense, directing her atte