Arthur found her in the garden, when he came, in a favorite place of hers, sitting on an old stone seat by the little brook, where it was most densely overshadowed by the flowering shrubs. She had that serious look in her dark eyes which he loved best in them, and she neither blushed nor smiled when he took her hand and sat him down beside her. Arthur had often fancied that at this time a flow of speech worthy of a Petrarch would be his; but as it was, the simplest words alone seemed strong to him. “The day has seemed so long to me!” Perhaps he thought it true; but it was not. The day had seemed short, and full of dreams. She made no answer; but, in a moment, turned her head and looked at him, gravely, as it seemed to Arthur, fondly, as it might have seemed to an older man. “I do not think we ought to be engaged,” she said; and this he could not make her unsay in all the afternoon. But the old tragicomedy was re-enacted, which is so old, and will seem so new to our great-grandchildren; and Arthur knew, at the first, that she loved no one else; and at the last, he knew, or might have known, that she loved him. But the _yes_ she would not say, but only, _wait_; and when he urged, But you may care for someone else? she only said, “I shall care for no one else, Arthur”--and at the last it grew to be but a pleasant play, so sure he was of her. It was settled between them that he was to go to New York and make his fortune and hers; and that then he was to come back and ask her father’s consent; or sooner perhaps, if the fortune was too slow in coming. She would not write to him, she said,--but she would answer a letter now and then--and he kissed her once for the first time, under the old lilac bush, before they left. And more, a thousand times more, he felt in love with her than he had even been that morning; and so they came out of the greenery into the broad sward with the long slanting shadows of the sunset, he still holding to her hand. They were close on the Lenox road; and he had to drop her hand in haste, as an open carriage came swinging by, bearing an old acquaintance of ours--Mrs. Levison Gower and a guest of hers from Lenox. The guest must have made some quick remark to Mrs. Gower about them; for they both turned and looked at the young people, and she bowed to Gracie; and then the light wheels whisked by, leaving but the dust, and the crisp sound of the horses’ trot. Arthur had noticed the glance, but did not speak of it; he saw that Gracie was blushing again. He forgot even to ask who Mrs. Gower was, as he took Gracie’s hand again in his; and together, slowly, they went down the broad garden-walk. CHAPTER V. OF GRACIE HOLYOKE AND OF HER HEART.