Writing a note to Mr. Dermott, in which; without stating her reasons, she declined his offer, she dispatched it by one of her own servants, lately promoted to the office of Abigail, and attired herself for a walk. It was Saturday, and the weather faultless. A sigh of relief escaped her when she was in the outer air--she was free for a while. The streets were densely peopled--dashing ladies, and marble-playing urchins, glorying in the holiday; bustling, pushing men, and lazy nurses lugging fat babies; and through the incongruous crowd the pale thinker threaded her way, jostling and jostled, wrapped in herself, as they thought but of their individual personality, with this difference--they seemed happy in their selfishness; she was miserable in her isolation. She did not see that Pemberton passed her with a stiff bow, which, in punishment for her non-recognition, he resolved should be exchanged for a decided "cut" at their next meeting; did not catch Mr. Purcell's eye, as forgetting her rebuff in his pleasure at espying one, who could rightly value the prize he had discovered in an antiquated volume, musty with age, he beckoned to her from the door of the bookstore; did not hear Emma Glenn's modest "Good morning, Miss Ida," although she liked the child, and would have loved her if she had dared. She turned from the busy thoroughfare into an unfrequented street, keeping the same rapid pace; the mind was working, the body must be moving too--on, still on, with unflagging speed--'till she found herself upon the summit of the hill overlooking the lower part of the city, and near the old church-yard. She stopped, and looked in. A flight of steps led up to the burying-ground, several feet above the level of the walk. What tempted her to ascend? She had been there before, and was not interested--yet the irresolution ended in her entrance. It was very still in that Acropolis of the dead: the long grass, yellow in the October sun, waved without rustling; the sere leaves drifted silently to the ground; from the mass of buildings below her arose only a measured beat rather than hum--as regular, and not louder, than the "muffled drum" within her bosom. The warring elements of discord sank into a troubled rest, but their conflict was easier to be borne than the reaction that succeeded. "Free among the dead;" forgotten as they, she sat upon a broken tombstone, in the shadow of the venerable church, with sorrowful eyes which looked beyond the city, the river, and the undulating low-grounds skirting its banks. She had said to herself an hundred times, "I cannot be happy; it is folly to hope." But this morning she felt she had never until now relinquished hope; that despair, for the first time, stalked through the deserted halls of her heart, and the dreaded echo "alone" answered his footsteps.