Oh! the bliss of those early days! The strange sweetness of their new companionship! The weather, too, was propitious—balmy and mild, though spring was yet young, with unutterable freshness and hope in its breath and coloring. The delicious sense of safety from all intruders; the delight of being at home with Ella; of winning her complete confidence. Never before had Wilton tasted the joy of associating with a woman who was neither a toy nor a torment, but a true, though softer, comrade, whose every movement and attitude charmed and satisfied his taste, and whose quick sense of beauty, of character, and of the droll sides of things, gave endless variety to their every-day intercourse.

Theirs was no mere fool's paradise of love and kisses. Sketching and fishing, the days flew by. Wilton had decided that the little inn at VigÈres was too noisy and uncomfortable to be endured, and Ella had found lodgings in the house of a small proprietor, who sometimes accommodated lovers of the gentle craft, and, moreover, found favor in the eyes of the landlord and his bright-eyed, high-capped Norman cook and house-keeper, her fluent French and knowledge of foreign housewifery exciting admiration and respect. It was a straggling, gray-stone edifice, just outside the village, with a very untidy yard behind, and a less untidy garden in front, where a sun-dial, all mossed and lichen-covered, was half buried in great, tangled bushes of roses and fuchsias; on this a large, scantily-furnished salon looked out, and beyond the garden on an undulating plain, with the sea and Mont St. Michel in the blue distance, with a dark mass of forest on the uplands to the south—a wide stretch of country, ever changing its aspect, as the broad shadows of the slow or quick-sailing clouds swept over it, or the level rays of the gradually lengthening sunset bathed it with the peculiar yellow, golden spring light, so different from the rich red tinge of autumn. Winding round the base of the abrupt hill on which VigÈres, like so many Norman villages, was perched, was a tolerably large stream, renowned in the neighborhood, and, though left to take care of itself, still affording fair sport. It led away through a melancholy wood and some wide, unfenced pasturage, to the neglected grounds of a chateau, with the intendant of which, Wilton, aided by Ella, held many a long talk on farming, politics, and every subject under the sun.

These rambles had an inexpressible charm—a mingled sense of freedom and occupation. Then the repose of evening, as night closed in; the amusement of watching Ella at her work or drawing; to lead her on to unconsciously picturesque reminiscences; to compare their utterly different impressions and ideas—for Ella was not self-opinionated; though frank and individual, she was aware her convictions were but the echo of those she had heard all her life, and she listened with the deepest interest to her husband's, even while she did not agree. These pleasant communings were so new to Wilton, so different from all his former experience, that perhaps time has seldom sped on so lightly during a honeymoon. Ella was utterly unconventional, and yet a gentlewoman to the core, transparently candid, and, if such a term can be permitted, gifted with a noble homeliness that made affectation, or assumption, or unreality of any kind, impossible to her. Whether she made a vivid, free translation from some favorite Italian poet at Wilton's request, or took a lesson from him in tying flies, or gave him one in drawing, or dusted their sitting-room, or (as Wilton more than once found her) did some bit of special cooking in the big, brown kitchen, while Manon looked on, with her hands in her apron-pockets, talking volubly, she was always the same—quiet, earnest, doing her very best, with the inexpressible tranquillity of a single purpose. Then the shy tenderness and grace of her rare caresses—the delicate reserve that had always something yet to give, and which not even the terrible ordeal of wedded intimacy could scorch up—these were elements of an inexhaustible charm—at least to a man of Wilton's calibre.

It was evening—the evening of a very bright, clear day. Wilton had started early on a distant expedition, with a son of their host for a guide, and had returned to a late dinner. It had been too long a walk for Ella to undertake, and now she sat beside her husband under the window of their salon, in the violet-scented air of an April night, as it grew softly dusk. Wilton was enjoying pleasant rest, after just enough fatigue to make it welcome, and watching, with a lazy, luxurious sense of satisfaction, the movements of Ella's little deft fingers, as she twisted some red ribbon into an effective bow, and pinned it upon an edifice of lace, which Wilton could not quite make out.

"What can that thing be for, Ella? You are not going to wear it?" he asked, at last.

"Wear it? Oh, no! It is for Manon; she begged me to make her a Parisian cap. I advised her to keep to her charming Norman head-dress; but no! Monsieur le CurÉ's house-keeper has a cap from Paris, and Manon is not to be outdone; so she gave me the lace, and I contributed the ribbon. Do you know, this lace is very lovely? Look at it."

"I suppose it is; but I am glad to find you admire lace; I was afraid you were above dress."

"Indeed I am not; but I always liked—I had almost said loved—lace. I would prefer lace to jewels, if the choice were offered me. And then a hat or a bonnet is a source of joy, if they suit me."

"And we have been here nearly a month—"

"A month yesterday," observed Ella, softly, with a happy smile.

"Time passes quickly in paradise," said Wilton, leaning caressingly toward his companion.—"But, I was going to say, we have been here a month, and you have never had a chance of shopping. It is a dear delight to shop, is it not?"

"I do not know," replied Ella, laughing, and turning her work to view it on all sides. "I never had any money to spend in shops."

"I should like to see you under fire—I mean in temptation. Suppose we go over to A—— for a day or two: that is the nearest approach to a dazzling scene we can manage?"

"As you like; but, dear Ralph"—looking wistfully out over the garden—"I love this place, and am loath to take even a day from the few that remain to us here. I suppose we must soon leave for London?"

"You would like to stay here always?"

"No," returned Ella, "certainly not; stagnation would not suit either of us, though I deeply enjoy this sweet resting-place. It will soon be time to move on."

"We have a fortnight still before us, so we will run over to A—— to-morrow. Our host can lend us his shandradan, with that monstrous gray mare, to drive over there. I know you expressed a great wish to sketch some of those picturesque old towers as we came through, and you shall buy some lace if you like. I have had so much fishing that I shall come back with renewed zest after a short break."

"Yes; I should greatly like to take some sketches in A——; but, as to buying lace, do you know we spend a quantity of money here—I am astonished and shocked to think how much?"

"Then I am afraid I have been a very extravagant fellow, for I do not think I ever spent so little in the same space of time before. But, talking of money reminds me I must write to Lord St. George. I have forgotten all about him—all about every one except you, you little demure sorceress!"

"Do not forget him, if he is old and a relation."

"Well, I will write to him to-morrow. It is not much matter; he will never see my face again."

"Because you married me?"

"This is really a very picturesque place," said Ella as they strolled through the principal street of A——, and ascended the plateau, once adorned by a cathedral, "but, after all, there is more cheerfulness in English scenery. I miss the gentlemen's seats, the look of occupation, the sense of life that springs from individual freedom. Tyranny and want of cultivation—these are the real 'phantoms of fright.'"

"Yes; we have never mistaken license for liberty in England," returned Wilton, with genuine John-Bullism.

"Thanks to your early training," said Ella, smiling; "but if for centuries you had never been allowed to stand or walk without leading-strings, supports, restraints on the right hand and on the left, and had then been suddenly set free, with all accustomed stays wrenched from you, do you think you would not have stumbled and fallen like your neighbors?"

"True, O queen! but why did not our neighbors begin to train themselves in time? They are of different stuff; there lies the key to the puzzle."

"And in the might of circumstance," put in Ella. "You can never thank Heaven enough for your insular position; but there is something in race."

"No doubt of it. Look at this man coming toward us; you could never mistake him for anything but a Briton."

"No, indeed!" exclaimed Ella; "and"—drawing a little near to him—"is it not your cousin, St. George Wilton?"

"By Jove! you are right, Ella. What can bring him here?"

The object of their remark was facing them as the colonel ceased to speak.

"Ralph Wilton—Miss—" St. George stopped himself in his exclamation, and then continued, raising his hat with a soft but meaning smile, "I little thought I should encounter you in this remote region!"

"Nor I you," returned Wilton, bluntly. "Mrs. Wilton and I have been staying near this, at a place called VigÈres, where there is very tolerable fishing, and drove over this morning to look at this old town. What brings you so far from the haunts of men?"

"The vagaries of an old woman, if it be not too irreverend to say so," replied St. George, raising his hat again with profound respect as his cousin pronounced the words "Mrs. Wilton." "I have an aged aunt who, for some inscrutable reason, chooses to mortify her flesh and spare her pocket by residing here. I never dreamed I should meet with such a vision of happiness as—Mrs. Wilton and yourself in this fossilized place."

There was just a slight, significant pause before the name "Mrs. Wilton," which caught her husband's ear, and it sounded to him like a veiled suspicion.

"Where are you staying?" he asked.

"Oh, at the HÔtel du Nord. My aunt wishes the pleasure of a visit from me, but declines to put me up."

"We are just going to dine at your hotel," said Colonel Wilton, "and will be very happy if you will join us."

St. George accepted his cousin's invitation with his best air of frank cordiality. It was a very pleasant dinner; nothing could be more agreeable than the accomplished attachÉ. His tone of cousinly courtesy to Ella was perfect; his air of well-regulated enjoyment positively exhilarating. Wilton never thought he should like his kinsman's society so much. Even Ella warmed to him comparatively, and, though more disposed to listen than to talk, contributed no small share to the brightness of the conversation.

At last it was time to undertake the homeward drive to VigÈres, some four or five miles up and down hill. While waiting for the remarkable-looking vehicle in which the journey was to be performed, St. George Wilton found a moment to speak with his cousin alone.

"And it is a real bona fide marriage, Ralph?"

"Real as if the Archbishop of Canterbury had performed it, with a couple of junior officers to help him."

St. George was silent, and affected to busy himself in preparing a cigar. Not even his trained self-control could enable him to command his voice sufficiently to hide the enormous contempt that such a piece of frantic insanity inspired.

"So very charming a person as Mrs. Wilton," said he at last, blandly, "may well excuse the imprudence of a love-match; but let me ask, merely that I may know how to act, is it an open as well as a bona fide marriage? I mean, do you wish it concealed from our friend Lord St. George, because—"

"Certainly not," interrupted Colonel Wilton. "I have not written to inform him of it, for he has left my last letter some months unanswered, and I did not think he cared to hear from me; but, as it is possible he may fancy I intended to make a secret of my marriage, I will write to him to-morrow."

"It is not of much importance," said St. George, checking the dawning of a contemptuous smile. "Whatever view he takes of the subject will be inimical to your interests. Suppose I were to call upon him and explain matters? I start for London to-morrow morning."

"I will not trouble you," said Wilton a little stiffly; and Ella, appearing at that moment in the door-way, the conversation took a different turn.

"Draw your cloak closer, Ella," said her husband, as they proceeded homeward under the soft silver of a young May moon at the sober pace which was their steed's fastest; "there is a tinge of east in the wind. I began our acquaintance by wrapping you up, and I see I shall always be obliged to make you take care of yourself."

"I take care of myself now," she replied, nestling nearer to him. "I did not think your cousin could be so agreeable," she continued.

"Nor I," said Wilton, shortly.

"Yet," resumed Ella, "I can never banish my first impression of him."

"What was it?"

"That he could always keep faith in the letter and break it in the spirit; that he could betray in the most polished manner possible, without ever committing any vulgar error that law or society could fasten upon."

"Upon my soul, you have made a very nice estimate of the only member of your new family with whom you have come in contact. And where, pray, have you found such well-defined ideas of treachery? I did not think there was so much of this world's lore in that pretty little head. How did you learn it?"

"Ah, treachery is a thing I have often known! The wonder is, as my father used to say, that, where so many powerful temptations surrounded us, poor political outcasts, so few proved false."

"Yet you have not learned to be suspicious, Ella?"

"Heaven forbid! No one who is really true at heart ever really learns to be suspicious."

Wilton fulfilled his intention the following day, and wrote a short, simple account of his marriage to Lord St. George, regretting that he should be a source of disappointment to him, and stating that he, of course, held him quite exonerated from any promise, implied or not, respecting his property.

It was quite a relief to him having accomplished this. He had now cut himself adrift from all chances of social preËminence; it remained to work up in his profession, and his thoughts naturally turned to India. Great changes, civil and military, were pending there; his own services had been recognized by men high in office; already the breath of the outer world had somewhat withered the loveliness of his Arcadia—it was time for him to be up and doing.

"Ella! come here, darling. I am afraid we must go back to London and common life next week; so let us make an expedition to Mont St. Michel to-morrow. How does the tide serve?"

Three or four happy days were spent in visiting the strange fortress-prison and Old-World picturesque little town of Granville; in delicious rambles and abundant sketching. Ella was absolutely excited by the wealth of subjects, all of a new character to her, which offered themselves for her pencil. But Wilton had exhausted his slender capacity for repose, and, having thoroughly enjoyed himself, was once more longing for active life.

The day but one after their return from this brief expedition, a letter reached Wilton from the family solicitor. He had been out smoking, and talking of farming with the landlord; and Ella remarked, as he took the letter, that he exclaimed, as if to himself, "From old Kenrick! what can he want?" His countenance changed as he read: and then, throwing down the letter, he cried, "I wish to Heaven I had written to him before! He has passed away, doubting me!"

"Who?" asked Ella, trembling with a sudden apprehension of evil.

"Poor old St. George!—the old man of whom I have spoken to you."

"Your marriage has not broken his heart, I trust?"

"No; I am not sure he had a heart to break. But, Ella, you have turned pale, my own darling! Do not torment yourself; the living or dying of every one belonging to me can never affect my happiness with you; you are worth them all to me. But this letter—here, read it." And, passing one arm round her, Wilton held out the letter for her to peruse. "You see," he continued, "Kenrick (he is Lord St. George's solicitor and the Wiltons' solicitor generally) says he has died suddenly without a will. I am his heir-presumptive and nearest of kin—the only person entitled to act or to give directions. We must, therefore, start for London to-morrow. I will see Monsieur le PropriÉtaire, and settle with him at once."

Ella sighed, and cast one long look out into the garden, where the bees were humming and the first roses blooming, and away over the variegated, map-like country beyond, with its distant, dim blue line of sea—a farewell look at the scene where she had tasted for the first time in a somewhat sad existence, the divine cup of full, fresh delight; then, holding her cheek to her husband's kiss, gently disengaged herself and went away to prepare for turning over a new leaf in the book of life.