ALMOST sixteen months had passed since the dewless September morning, when Mabel had gathered roses in the garden walks, and her brother's return had shaken the dew with the bloom from her young heart. It was the evening of Christmas-day, and the tide of wassail, the blaze of yule, were high at Ridgeley. Without, the fall of snow that had commenced at sundown, was waxing heavier and the wind fiercer. In-doors, fires roared and crackled upon every hearth; there was a stir of busy or merry life in every room. About the spacious fire-place in the “baronial” hall was a wide semicircle of young people, and before that in the parlor, a cluster of elders, whose graver talk was enlivened, from time to time, by the peals of laughter that tossed into jubilant surf the stream of the juniors' converse. Nearest the mantel, on the left wing of the line, sat the three months' bride, Imogene Barksdale, placid, dove-eyed, and smiling as of yore, very comely with her expression of satisfied prettiness nobody called vanity, and bedecked in her “second day's dress” of azure silk and her bridal ornaments. Her husband hovered on the outside of the ring, now pulling the floating curls of a girl-cousin (every third girl in the country was his cousin, once, twice, or thrice-removed, and none resented the liberties he, as a married man, was pleased to take), anon whispering in the ear of a bashful maiden interrogatories as to her latest admirer or rumored engagement; oftenest leaning upon the back of his wife's chair, a listener to what was going on, his hand lightly touching her lace-veiled shoulders, until her head gradually inclined against his arm. They were a loving couple, and not shy of testifying their consent to the world. “They remind me irresistibly of a pair of plump babies sucking at opposite ends of a stick of sugar candy!” Rosa Tazewell said aside to the hostess, as the latter paused beside her on her way through the hall to the parlor. “The candy is very sweet!” replied Mrs. Aylett, charitably, but laughing at the conceit--the low, musical laugh that was at once girlish in its gleefulness, yet perfectly well-bred.