The clouds were at once lifted off from her soul, and she was once more the light-hearted girl she had been in her English home. In the midst of her happiness there was a feeling of insecurity, a doubt as to its continuance. But that Edith would not allow herself to dwell upon. It was happiness enough for the present to think that one whom she so highly esteemed still cared enough for her to seek her out in her secluded home. But before the last hours of the old year had passed away, walking in the serene moonlight under those pine-trees to whose mournful murmur her thoughts had been so long attuned, Edith listened with a beating heart to the avowal of the same feelings which Mr. Hildreth had confessed to her father more than a year before. What had become of all the sadness that had brooded over Edith's heart so many months? It was gone like the clouds from the sky, but not to return, like them, in a few short hours. "How did you find me out?" asked Edith, after many more important questions had been asked and answered. "Ah, a little bird told me where I should find the runaway." "A bird?" said Edith, wonderingly. "Perhaps it was the cage rather than the bird," replied Mr. Hildreth. "I had been for some two or three months in search of you, or rather your aunt, with whom I was told you were staying. But she seemed to be possessed by some perverse and wandering spirit; for, when I went to London to find her, she had just left with her family on a tour through Germany, and, when I followed her there, I learned she had gone into Italy. Into Italy I went post haste, and reached Naples just in time to learn that Mrs. Burnleigh had left the week before for Egypt and the Pyramids. No whit daunted, I was about to seek you, even if I had to go to the heart of Ethiopia, when the sudden illness of my aunt recalled me to Marseilles. Her death obliged me to return to New York; but I arranged my business there as soon as possible, and had already engaged my passage in the next steamer to Liverpool, when, walking through Fifth Avenue, my eye was attracted by a cage that I recognized instantly, by certain peculiarities, as one that I had sent you just before I left England after our pleasant tour. A sudden hope seized me that some happy impulse had led your travel-loving aunt to my very hearthstone, and I lost no time in making inquiries of the lady of the house, from whom I learned all about the little Edith for whom I had been seeking in such far away places. "And now, dearest," he continued, after a pause, "have you any objection to a tour through Europe? I went in such haste before that, far from satisfying my curiosity, I only increased the desire to see everything more at my leisure." "None at all," said Edith, with a smile and blush. "Well, then, I will see how soon Mrs. Blake can spare you, and we will set off on our travels. I hope she will be very obliging about it."