There is another general break-down; they all cling one to another, Hal and Lottie howling dismally, Robert's haughty eyes swimming too in tears, until the sound of voices in a neighboring field forces them to compose themselves, and they walk slowly across the upland meadow, at the furthest corner of which they separate, the boys, at the urgent invitation of their terriers, making for a rat-haunted ditch in the neighborhood, the girls strolling toward Nutsford through the northern end of the grove. Miss Lefroy stalks on moodily in front, Lottie, still battling with her emotion, clinging to her firm young arm. Pauline walks behind alone, full of bitter thought, her straight brows painfully puckered. On the morrow a new, strange life is to begin for her, one that she knows will be eminently distasteful; her free young spirit is to be "cribbed, cabined, confined," in the narrow path of conventionality at last, and the prospect dismays her. Look as far ahead as she can, she can see no break in the gathering gloom--can see only that at seventeen the summer of her life is over and the long winter about to begin. Hope tells her no flattering tale; she does not know that in herself she holds the key of a triumphant liberty, of a future of sunlight, of glory, of all that is sweet too, and coveted by womanhood. Pauline does not know that she is beautiful, does not feel the shadow of her coming power, or guess that the lithe willowy grace of her straight young form, the glorious black of her eyes, the pure glow of her brunette skin, the chiseled outline of her small features, will purchase for her goods and pleasures of which her careless innocent girlhood has never dreamed. No lover has whispered in her ear "the music of his honey vows," and the cracked, fly-stained mirrors at Nutsgrove have told her nothing; and so she is sad and sorrow-laden, and the burden of dependence and uncongenial companionship looming before her seems to her almost more than she can bear. In silence they pass out of the green gloom of the grove, where "fair enjeweled May" has touched with balmy breath each tiny bud, each tender leaf, "Half prankt with spring, with summer half embrowned." Under a scented hawthorn-hedge, skirting the main road that leads into the High Street of Nutsford, the Misses Lefroy pause for a moment to adjust the sylvan vagaries of their toilet.