“It is past the hour, and yet she is not here. Oh! if she knew, if she but knew what a hell it enkindles in my heart to be kept waiting, to be set doubting, to be tormented thus. But no!” he added in a moment, as if reproving his own vehemence. “No, no! something has fallen wrong—something has hindered or delayed her. And yet what should it be? Can we have been betrayed, discovered? God!” he exclaimed, springing again to his feet, “Great God, forgive me! as I cannot endure this any longer. Away with my word, when hers is broken thus! away! I will go seek her even in—” But as he made the first motion to take the path leading toward the house, his impetuosity was arrested, and his rash speech cut off, by the apparition of a figure entering the verdant arch from the lawn, and advancing with a slow and hesitating step, as if timid or reluctant, toward the tank and the upper glen. The young man’s heart beat rapidly and high, as that form, distinguishable only in the increasing duskiness of evening by its relief against the twilight sky, entered the green arcade; and it was a minute or two before he could discern with any certainty the sex, much less the identity of the person approaching him. There is, however, in the senses of a lover something intuitive, that can for the most part discern unerringly the presence of the beloved object, by sounds, by signs, perhaps even by perfumes, so slight as to be imperceptible to any one, whose every nerve were not supernaturally sharpened by the influence of passion. Something it must have been of this amorous prescience, which rendered the cavalier almost certain, long ere the eye could inform him, that the figure approaching was no other than the person to meet whom he had ridden hither, and whose delay had caused him so much anxiety. Nor was he deceived; for ere long the fluttering of female habiliments, might be distinguished clearly, and in another moment the well-known sounds of the light gentle footstep, and the silvery tones of the soft low voice assured him. He bounded from his covert to meet her, and she too quickened her step, as she saw and recognized her lover.