"Can you read?" he asked, "I mean read as you talk, without drawl or singing?" I replied I hoped I could. He said we should see, and handed me the mineralogical treatise. For two hours I read without stopping. At length he said that was enough. I felt quite faint and exhausted, and asked if I could leave him. He assented, adding-- "Mind you keep a look-out for 'Chaos and Creation!'" I promised to do so, and left him much relieved. The day was hot; the air of the close, dusty, old study felt stifling. I went out into the garden at the back of the house, and sat down in the arbour. I had not been there five minutes before I was joined by my cousin, Edward Thornton. He was beginning to make himself very pleasant and agreeable, when Mrs. Langton appeared stepping down daintily from beneath the porch, like a lady in a picture. She had discarded her widow's cap; the warm sunlight gave a brown tint to her jet black hair, and she looked fresh and fair as the rose which she held in one hand, whilst the other slightly raised her sweeping skirt. Mr. Thornton rose and resigned to her his place by me, which she accepted with a gracious smile. He stood before us, talking in his easy, agreeable way; I looked and listened, remembering that in this very spot, seven years before, they had met and parted. They, too, remembered it; for ere long I had the pleasure of finding that I was made the medium of their well-bred sneers. Edward Thornton addressed the chief portion of his discourse to me, and put several unimportant questions, each, more or less, arrows that glanced at Mrs. Langton. "Is it not about seven years ago, that I saw you here?" he observed carelessly. "Yes, Sir, exactly seven years." "It seems a long time, does it not?" he added, addressing Mrs. Langton, as if to remind her that seven years had passed over her beauty. "Very!" she replied, smelling her rose, and looking like one for whom time does not exist. "I remember you quite well," Edward continued, addressing me, "a small fair child, with bright golden hair, which has now deepened into brown." "Do you?" I replied, amused by this little bit of fiction, to which Mrs. Langton listened, smiling at the slight put on her glossy tresses, dark as the raven's wing. "Oh! yes," he continued, "Bertha and I used to call you the little white rose. Your name is Rose, is it not?" "No, my name is Daisy; that is to say, Margaret, but at home I am always called Daisy." "The name of the sweetest wild flower," he replied, smiling; "there may be less beauty about it," he continued, "than about the rose, but then it has a grace and a freshness quite its own." The Rose looked scornful. Not relishing being thus made the instrument of Mr. Edward Thornton's pique, I rose, and spite of his entreaties, left the arbour. Common politeness would not allow him to desert Mrs. Langton; how they got on together is more than I know. They were studiously polite at dinner.