“What a fierce crimson!” Frederic remarked upon the widely-opened rose Miss Tazewell received in place of the delicate bud. “That must be the 'hue angry, yet brave,' which, Mr. George Herbert asserts, 'bids the rash gazer wipe his eye.'” “More poetical nonsense!” said Rosa, deliberately tearing the bold “geant” to pieces down to the bare stem, “unless he meant to be comic, and intimate that the gazer was so rash as to come too near the bush, and ran a thorn into the pupil.” No one answered, except by the indulgent smile that usually greeted her sallies, however absurd, among those accustomed to the spoiled child's vagaries. Mabel was making some leisurely additions to her bouquet in the shape of ribbon grass and pendent ivy sprays, coaxing these with persuasive touches to trail over the edge and entwine the pedestal of the salver on which her bowl was elevated; her head set slightly on one side, her lips apart in a smile of enjoyment in her work and in herself. It was a picture the lover studied fondly--one that hung forever thereafter in his gallery of mental portraits. Beyond a pair of fine gray eyes, the pliant grace of her figure and the buoyant carriage of youth, health, and a glad heart, Mabel's pretensions to beauty were comparatively few, said the world. Frederic Chilton had, nevertheless, fallen in love with her at sight, and considered her, now, the handsomest woman of his acquaintance. Her dress was a simple lawn--a sheer white fabric, with bunches of purple grass bound up with yellow wheat, scattered over it; her hair was lustrous and abundant, and her face, besides being happy, was frank and intelligent, with wonderful mobility of expression. In temperament and sentiment; in capacity for, and in demonstration of affection, she suited Frederic to the finest fibre of his mind and heart. He, for one, did not carp at Aunt Rachel's declaration that they were intended to spend time and eternity together.