Olive nodded. 'Father thought you would like your old room, aunt--the one he and mother always called yours.' The tears came again in Mildred's eyes. Somehow it seemed but yesterday since Betha welcomed her so warmly, and showed her the room she was always to call hers. There was the tiny dressing-room, with its distant view, and the quaint old-fashioned room, with an oaken beam running across the low ceiling, and its wide bay-window. There was the same heartsease paper that Mildred remembered seven years ago, the same flowery chintz, the curious old quilt, a hundred years old, covered with twining carnations. The very fringe that edged the beam spoke to her of a brother's thoughtfulness, while the same hand had designed the motto which from henceforth was to be Mildred's own--'_Laborare est orare_.' 'The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places,' whispered Mildred as she drew near the window, and stood there spell-bound by the scene, which, though well-remembered, seemed to come before her with new beauty. Underneath her lay the vicarage garden, with its terrace walk and small, trim lawn; and down below, half hidden by a steep wooded bank, flowed the Eden, its pebbly beach lying dry under the low garden wall, but farther on plashing with silvery gleams through the thick foliage. To the right was the footbridge leading to the meadows, and beyond that the water-mill and the weir; and as far as eye could reach, green uplands and sweeps of pasturage, belted here and there with trees, and closing in the distance soft ranges of fells, ridge beyond ridge, fading now into gray indistinctness, but glorious to look upon when the sun shone down upon their 'paradise of purple and the golden slopes atween them,' or the storm clouds, lowering over them, tinged them with darker violet. 'A place to live in and die in,' thought Mildred, solemnly, as the last thing that night she stood looking out into the moonlight. The hills were invisible now, but gleams of watery brightness shone between the trees, and the garden lay flooded in the silver light. A light wind stirred the foliage with a soft soughing movement, and some animal straying to the river to drink trod crisply on the dry pebbles. 'A place where one should think good thoughts and live out one's best life,' continued Mildred, dreamily. A sigh, almost a groan, from beneath her open window seemed to answer her unspoken thought; and then a dark figure moved quietly away. It was Richard! CHAPTER IV MILDRED'S NEW HOME 'Half drowned in sleepy peace it lay, As satiate with the boundless play Of sunshine on its green array. And clear-cut hills of gloomy blue, To keep it safe, rose up behind, As with a charmed ring to bind The grassy sea, where clouds might find A place to bring their shadows to.'--Jean Ingelow.