Now, as it fell upon a day, perfectly innocent of there being any vicious animal in the neighbourhood, Ella Bedford had passed through this very meadow during a walk with her three pupils. The morning was bright and sunshiny, and the sight of a fine snowy-wooled sheep cropping the bright green herbage was not one likely to create alarm. Had it been a cow, or even a calf, it might have been different, and the stiles and footpaths avoided for some other route; for the female eye is a strong magnifier of the bovine race, and we have known ladies refuse to pass through a field containing half-a-dozen calves, which had been magnified, one and all, into bulls of the largest and fiercest character. There was something delightful to Ella in the sweet repose of the country around. The grass was just springing into its brightest green, gilded here and there with the burnished buttercups, while in every hedge-side "oxlips and the nodding violet" were blooming; the oaks, too, were beginning to wear their livery of green and gold. The birds sang sweetly as they jerked themselves from spray to spray, while that Sims Reeves of the feathered race--the lark--balanced himself far up in the blue ether, and poured out strain after strain of liquid melody. There was that wondrous elasticity in the air, that power which sets the heart throbbing, and the mind dreaming of something bright, ethereal, ungrasped, but now nearer than ever to the one who drinks in the sweet intoxicating breath of spring. There was a brightness in Ella's eye, and a slight flush in her cheek, as she walked on with her pupils, smiling at each merry conceit, and feeling young herself, in spite of the age of sorrow that had been hers. For a while she forgot the strange home and the cool treatment she was receiving; the unpleasant attentions, too, of the hopeful son of the house; the meeting in the gallery. The wearisome compliments at the flower-show were set aside; for--perhaps influenced by the bright morning--Ella's cheek grew still more flushed, and in spite of herself she dwelt upon the scene where she pictured two beings addressed by a frank bold horseman; and as his earnest gaze seemed directed once more at her, Ella's heart increased its pulsations, but only to be succeeded by a dull sense of aching misery, as another picture floated before her vision, to the exclusion of the sunny landscape and the glorious spring verdure. The sweet liquid trill of the birds, too, grew dull on her ear; for she seemed once more to see the same earnest gaze fixed upon her face, and then to watch the start of surprise--was it disappointment?--as again Laura Bray's words rang on her ears: "Miss Bedford, our new governess!" It was time to cease dreaming, she thought.