THE SISTERS. A TALE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. BY H. W. HERBERT, AUTHOR OF “RINGWOOD THE ROVER,” “THE BROTHERS,” “CROMWELL,” ETC. ETC. (Continued from page 30.) PART II. The morning after Marian’s arrival at the Manor was one of those bright lovely dawns, sure harbingers of sweet and sunny days, that often interrupt the melancholy progress of an English autumn, fairer and softer as the season waxes older, and more enchanting from the contrast, which they cannot fail to suggest, between their balmy mildness and the chill winds and gloomy fogs of the approaching winter. The sky was altogether cloudless, yet it had nothing of the deep azure hue which it presents in summer, resembling in its tints and its transparency a canopy, if such a thing could be, of living aqua-marine, and kindled by a flood of pure, pale yellow lustre. None of the trees were wholly leafless, though none, perhaps, unless it were a few old oaks, but had lost something of their summer foliage; and their changed colors, varying from the deepest green through all the shades of yellow down to the darkest umber, although prophetic of their coming doom, and therefore saddening, with a sort of chastened spiritual sorrow, the heart of the observer, added a solemn beauty to the scenery that well accorded with its grand and romantic character. The vast round-headed hills, seen through the filmy haze which floated over them, filling up all their dells and hollows, showed every intermediate hue from the red russet of their heathery foreground to the rich purple of their farthest peaks. The grass, which had not yet begun to lose its verdant freshness, was thickly meshed with gossamer, which, sprinkled by the pure and plenteous dews, flashed like a net of diamonds upon a ground of emerald velvet to the early sunbeams. It had been summer, late indeed in that lovely season, but still full summer with all her garniture of green, her pomp of full blown flowers—the glorious mature womanhood of the year!—when Marian left her home; not a trace of decay or change was visible on its bright brow, not a leaf of its embroideries was altered, not a bud in its garland was blighted. She had returned, and every thing, though beautiful and glowing, bore the plain stamp of dissolution. The west wind blew as softly as in June through the tall sycamores, but after every breath, while all was lulled and peaceful, the broad sere leaves came whirling down from the shaken branches, on which their hold was now so slight that but the whisper of a sigh was needed to detach them—the skies, the waters, were as pure as ever, as beautifully clear and lucid; but in their brightness there was a chill and glassy glitter as different from their warm sheen under a July sun, as is the keen unnatural radiance of a blue eye in the consumptive girl