“Oh! you betray yourself,” gaily retorted Isabel, “but men are foolish—and of all foolish men I ever met with, a certain Albert Marston was, before his marriage, the most foolish. I take credit to myself,” she continued, in the same playful strain, “for having worked such a reformation in him since that event. But this is not what we were talking of—you wish to divert me from my purpose by this light Cossack warfare—but it won’t do,” she continued, and I fancied she stamped her foot prettily, as she was wont to do at Clairville Hall, when she was disposed to have her way; “no—no—Annette must be the one to turn penitent, and I will play father confessor. Say, now, fair coz, was it not a certain fancy to see this same rose-bush, that induced you to insist on coming here?” During this conversation the parties had remained nearly stationary at some distance from me. Strange suspicions began to flash through my mind, as soon as Isabel commenced her banter; and these suspicions had now been changed into a certainty. Annette was still unmarried, and it was Isabel’s wedding at which I had come so near being present, at Clairville Hall. Nor was this all. I was still loved. Oh! the wild, the rapturous feelings of that moment. I could with difficulty restrain myself from rising and rushing toward them; but motives of delicacy forbade me thus to reveal that the conversation had been overheard. And yet should I remain in my present position, and play the listener still further? I knew not what to do. All these considerations flashed through my mind in the space of less than a minute, during which the party had been silent, apparently enjoying Annette’s confusion. “Come, not ready to answer yet?” began Isabel; “well, if you will not, you shan’t have the rose from that bush, for which you’ve come. Let us go back,” she said, playfully. The whole party seemed to enter into the jest, and laughingly retraced their steps. This afforded me the opportunity for which I longed. Hastily rising from my seat, I glided unnoticed from tree to tree, until I reached a copse on the left of the glen, and advancing up the ravine, under cover of this screen, I re-entered the path at a bend some distance above the St. Clairs. Here I listened for a moment, and caught the sound of their approaching voices. Determining no longer to be a listener to their conversation, I proceeded down the glen, and, as I turned the corner, a few paces in advance, I came full in sight of the approaching group. In an instant the gay laughing of the party ceased, and I saw Annette shrink blushing behind her father. Isabel was the first to speak. Darting forward, with that frankness and gaiety which always characterized her, she grasped my hand, and said—