Breakfast came, and after breakfast Wentworth. Another tender and happy hour between the three, in which Wentworth made some revelations, poured out his soul in affection and gratitude to his dear fairy prince, as he called her, and lightened his scorn upon the good Fernando. Then Muriel having, in turn, toned down his meteor wrath, he and Emily set off together to Cambridge to announce their engagement to her parents, who were friends of his family, and very fond of him. They were to return the following day, and Emily was to continue her stay with Muriel. A little while after they left, Mrs. Eastman went out to spend that day and night at a relative’s in Milton, a few miles from Boston, and Muriel was left alone. No work that day for Muriel; no study, no visiting, no occupation of any kind. She summoned Patrick, and bade him deny her to every one that called, and then shut herself up in the library to pass the day alone. And all the long bright day—the sweet and beautiful deep-breathing sacred day—while the soft and opulent effulgence of the sun flooded the chamber with a mist of violet and gold, she lay at rest, or glided to and fro, lovely as some incarnate angel from a more ethereal star than ours, and with a mystic change upon her loveliness. For the summer of her life had come to her, and all its virginal and dewy lilies were in bloom. Summer languors filled her; Eden tremors melted through her; and floating in light and perfume through the tender-litten land of reverie and dreams, she heard the impassioned melodies of Paradise. A more bewildering grace had fallen around her form, and every negligent and flowing curve, veiled in the soft and snowy drapery of the robe she wore, seemed rounded to a contour more nobly and magically fair. Faint with excess of happiness, dreaming upon the sweet and secret purpose of her heart, and musing in a dim oblivion of tenderness on all that had been, and was, and was to be, while ever on and on the lilies of her love grew glowing into magic roses of red hymeneal joy—so passed the cloistered day, and evening fell. She rose from the couch on which she had sat, half reclining. The sunset light lay within the library, and rested on the luxuriant symmetry of her figure, as she stood with her hands crossed upon her bosom and her exalted face upturned. “You were right, my Emily,” she fervently murmured, “life is indeed life in the greatness and sweetness of love, but life is truliest life in loving and being beloved. And yet had I asked love, could I have felt this stainless flame of joy! Sweet, sweet when the two souls give the mutual undemanding love—sweet, sweet as the sweetness of Paradise! Oh, I am happy, happy!” She clasped her hands in a calm transport of joy, and with her head bowed upon her bosom, like a flower drooping with its wealth of bloom, she remained still and silent for a little while.