Mrs. Dunmore and Jennie were busy in talking over the past, and forming plans for the future, when Mr. Colbert was announced.

"I trust you will excuse my early call," said he, as they arose to greet him. "I have to leave the village at noon, which is my only apology for intruding upon your morning hours."

"We are always at home to our old and valued friends," replied Mrs. Dunmore. "I hope our long separation will not make us strangers to each other."

"Miss Jennie reminds me that a long interval has come between us," said the clergyman, glancing at the graceful and womanly figure before him; "I have been accustomed to think of her as the child of my pleasant rambles, so that I am scarcely prepared to meet her in another form."

Jennie had received him with that timid cordiality so common to early womanhood, a kind of shrinking from the advances of a new and not wholly defined stage of being, and, as he alluded to the days of her childhood and the hours spent together in his hill-girt home, a slight blush tinged her face, and she said, "the long interval has changed you too, Mr. Colbert, so that there needed early memories to aid me in recognizing you."

"Time has dealt very differently with us," replied her friend, as the mirror opposite enabled him to contrast his sunken and pallid features with the round and healthful face of the lovely girl. "There are many things, however, that encourage me in the hope that we are none the less friends than formerly, and that we still have the one great sympathy in common;" added he, recalling her devout manner in church the day before.

"Are you not well, Mr. Colbert," asked Mrs. Dunmore; "or do you trespass upon the hours necessary to your repose and recreation that you are so much thinner and paler than you used to be? I fear I must usurp your prerogative and turn preacher if you are really destroying your health by too great devotion to your duties."

"I have been quite a sufferer for the last few years, my dear madam," returned the minister; "but not from the cause you assign."

"Perhaps you need change," said the widow; "it is not well to confine one's self too constantly to one locality."

"I feel confident it is so," said Mr. Colbert, "since even so short a journey revives me materially; but how comes it," he asked, "that you are here, and apparently settled?"

"Jennie must explain that to you," replied Mrs. Dunmore, "as it was through her that our present arrangements were made."

"Ah! do you find a rural life so much more congenial than your city home that you have adopted it altogether?" said Mr. Colbert, addressing Jennie.

"It is not that," she replied, "the city was the scene of my happiest, as well as my saddest days, and we are soon to return to it; but this village is the home of my nearest relatives, who were restored to me a few years since through a singular Providence, and my grandfather's infirmities rendered it expedient that we should remain here until now."

Mrs. Dunmore seeing the tears that dropped upon her child's work at mention of her grandfather, took Mr. Colbert aside, and gave him a brief history of all that had occurred during the years of their severance, and when she had finished her relation of the old man's derangement, and of Jennie's devotion and love toward him, the minister arose, and walked backward and forward in the room with an absorbed and meditative air, and then stopping so suddenly before the young girl as to startle her, he said abruptly: "Will you give me one moment in the garden? I have a single word to say to you alone." Jennie laid aside her work, and as they stepped from the colonnade into the garden of their lodgings, she opened an adjoining wicket that led to her uncle's grounds, and, motioning Mr. Colbert to follow, she passed through and entered the little summer-house.

"Are we quite free from intrusion?" asked her companion, as she seated herself upon a bench near the window.

"I believe I reign sole monarch of this sequestered nook at this season," replied Jennie. "My cousins care little for such solitude now that the breeze is chilly and the flowers have vanished."

"Jennie," said her friend, leaning against a pillow as if for support, "if you knew that all my suffering for the last few years had been for you, that this change, and pallor, and thinness, were all occasioned by the fear that the time might never come when I could tell you that I love you, you would pardon such a hasty declaration of my feelings toward you. You were but a child when first we met," he continued, placing his hand upon her head as he had then been wont to do, "but how closely your young being had woven itself with mine my subsequent weary life will prove. Were you ever sundered from the object you had learned to prize most on earth, Jennie?" said he, as the drooping lashes were lifted, and the pensive, earnest eyes met his inquiring gaze, "and was there utter desolation? Then do you appreciate fully all that I would say to you of my own sorrow when bereft of the only mortal whom my heart had ever cared to cherish. I ask you not to bind yourself to me in an irrevocable vow, but to think of me as your truest friend until you have seen more of the world and of men. If then you can turn away from all to the heart that will never beat for another, and call me husband, God be praised—my only earthly prayer will be answered."

Not another word was spoken, but silently as they came so they went back, through the little wicket into the presence of Mrs. Dunmore, and Mr. Colbert made his adieus and departed—but alas for Henry Moore!