“A neat conceit that last verse, and the music is a fair imitation of a dying bugle-echo!” said Winston Aylett to himself, resuming the writing he had suspended for a minute. “That girl should take to the stage. If one did not know better, her eyes and singing together would delude him into the idea that she had a heart. Honest Alfred evidently believes that she has, and that the patient labor of love will win it for himself. Bah!” Frederic and Mabel retired noiselessly from their post of observation, as “honest Alfred” made a motion to take in his the hand lying prone and passive upon the finger-board. They exchanged a smile, significant and tender, in withdrawing. “We understand the signs of the times,” whispered Frederic, at the upper turn of their promenade. “Heaven bless all true lovers under the sun!” “Don't!” said Rosa, vehemently, snatching away her hand from her suitor's hold. “Leave me alone! If you touch me again I shall scream! I think you were made up without nerves, either in the heart or in the brain--if you have any!” Before the aghast Alfred rallied from the recoil occasioned by her gesture and words, her feet were pattering over the oaken hall and staircase in rapid retreat to her chamber. “You are really happy, then?” queried Mabel. “Quite content?” “Did I not tell you awhile ago that I was not satisfied?” returned Chilton. “Two months since I should, in anticipation of this hour, have declared that it would be fraught with unalloyed rapture. I was happier yesterday than I am to-day. It is not merely that we must part to-morrow, or that your brother's precautionary measures and disapproval of what has passed between us have acted like a shower-bath to the fervor of my newly born hopes. I am willing that my life should be subjected to the utmost rigor of his researches, and another month, at farthest, will reunite us. Nor do I believe in presentiments. I am more inclined to attribute the uneasiness that has hovered over me all the day to physical causes. We will call it a mild splenetic case, induced by the sultry weather, and the very slow on coming of the storm presaged by your dewless roses.” He laughed naturally and pleasantly. Having confessed to what he regarded as a ridiculous succumbing of his buoyant spirit to atmospheric influences, he shook off the nightmare as if it had never sat upon him. Mabel was grave still. “There is something weirdly oppressive in the night,” she said, in a low, awed tone. “But the burden you describe has weighed me down since morning. While Rosa was singing, I felt suddenly removed from you by a horrid gulf. What if all this should be the preparation to us for some impending danger?”