"Clayton--Harry Clayton; why don't you come?" exclaimed a man's voice; "why, I declare, if he isn't proposing to Miss Rawlinson!" Patty was pressing forward, parting the leaves with one hand, heedless of the thorns which pricked and tore her soft fingers, before she was able to obtain a passing glance of dark, study-paled Harry Clayton, rising with a smile from the feet of a young lady seated upon a garden-chair--a maiden who, at that distance, seemed to Patty to be very beautiful in her light muslin dress, and framed as it were in the soft verdure around. Then the listeners' ears were saluted by a merry burst of laughter, drowning the expostulating tones of a man's voice; while, with bleeding hands, ay! and bleeding heart, head bent, and the tears running from her great grey eyes, Patty turned and almost staggered away, closely followed by Janet; who, taking her arm, hurried her along, till, crossing a stile, they sat down beside the softly undulating corn. The stillness was complete around, only broken by the cawing of a colony of rooks amongst some distant elms. "Oh Patty, Patty, darling!" whispered Janet, taking the bended head to her breast, when, giving way to the desolation of her young heart in the fresh trouble that seemed to have come over her so suddenly, Patty wept long and bitterly, awakened as she was so rudely from a dream in which she had allowed herself to indulge. "Oh Patty, Patty!" softly whispered Janet again, as, down upon her knees, she rocked the little head that rested against her to and fro-- hushing her friend as if she had been a child, murmuring, too, as she bent over her--"And I thought so differently--so differently!" "Let us go--let us go away from here," sobbed Patty, after vainly struggling to repress her feelings.