It is not strange that under such circumstances the lonely widower should think of a successor to his lost wife, for Mittie needed a mother's restraining influence and guardian care. Nor is it strange, with her indomitable self-will, she should resist the authority of a stranger. When her father announced his intention of bringing home a lady to preside over his establishment, claiming for her all filial respect and obedience, she flew into a violent passion, and declared she would never own her as a mother, never address her as such--that she would leave home and never return, before she would submit to the government of a stranger. Unwilling to expose the woman who had consented to be his wife to scenes of strife and unhappiness, Mr. Gleason, as the only alternative, resolved to send his daughter to a boarding-school, before his mansion received its new mistress. Mittie exulted in this arrangement, for a boarding-school was the Ultima Thule of her ambition, and she boasted to her classmates that her father was afraid of her, and that he dared not marry while she was at home. Amiable boast of a child!--especially a daughter. Mr. Gleason was anxious to recall Helen, and place her at once under her new mother's guardianship, but Mrs. Hazleton pleaded, and the blind Alice pleaded with the mute eloquence of her sightless eyes, and the young doctor pleaded; and Helen, after being summoned to welcome her new parent, and share in the wedding festivities, was permitted to return to her beloved Parsonage. It was a beautiful spot--so rural, so retired, so far from the public road, so removed from noise and dust. It had such a serene, religious aspect, the traveler looking up the long avenue of trees, with a gradually ascending glance, to the unambitious, gray-walled mansion, situated at its termination, thought it must be one of the sweetest havens of rest that God ever provided for life's weary pilgrim. And so it was--and so Helen thought, when wandering with the blind Alice through the sequestered fields and wild groves surrounding the dwelling, or seated within the low, neat, white-washed walls, and listening to the mild, maternal accents of Arthur Hazleton's mother. It was a mild summer evening. The windows were all open, and the smell of the roses that peeped in through the casements, made sweeter as well as brighter by the dews of night, perfumed the whole apartment. Sometimes the rising breeze would scatter a shower of rose-leaves on the carpet, casting many a one on the heads of the young girls seated at a table, on either side of Mrs. Hazleton. Helen heeded not the petals that nestled in the hazel waves of her short, brown hair, but Alice, whose touch and hearing were made marvelously acute by her blindness, could have counted every rose-leaf that covered her fair, blonde ringlets.