The gold and amber leaves, turned their withered edges inward, and fell, in sear, crisp decay, from the half-naked trees. The flowers were all dead. The songs of the summer birds were entirely hushed, and thus stripped of all its rustic beauty, Ottawa stood, in mid-autumn, awaiting the pleasure of winter. It was the season, which of all others, appealed most eloquently to Honor Edgeworth's heart, to her, the season of "falling leaves" and "moaning winds," was nature's most sympathetic response, gratifying, as it did, the melancholy tendency in her nature. The dear, dead summer, had fled into that vast eternity. Little, trifling experiences, that at one time meant almost nothing, looked precious and eloquent, now that her eyes viewed them, with that backward glance, which one casts so sorrowfully on the things that are receding from them forever. Little words she had heard, little kindnesses she had felt, little songs she had sung, aye, and even little tears she had shed! all were wafted back for one delightful moment of sweet regret. She stood by the window again, as she did a year ago, two and three years ago, as she would, likely, in years to come, sunk in a reverie, watching the leaves fall, as they fell a twelve-month since; the leaves were just the same, the sky seemed still unchanged, the wind chanted the same weird, lonely lamentation, only _she_ was different, something had come into her life in that interval of years, and had gone out of it again, leaving it so desolate, so aimless, so blank! She had had a good draught from the cup of life, since that other autumn evening, when she stood at this very window, moralising on the transient nature of all mortal things. She had drunk deeply enough to know, that for souls like hers, happiness, is scattered among briars and thorns; she was a wiser, a sadder, perhaps even a better girl, this autumn day, but she was not happier, oh no! In a slow, solemn procession, the items of her years' experience, passed before her eyes, between the dead leaves and the closed window pane, she saw a panorama of memory. She was looking back with a sorrowful gratification upon the work of a couple of twelve-months, sighing now and then, smiling now and then, but never very happy over the suggestive souvenirs.