Having determined upon this plan, he immediately put it into action before the resolve had time to cool. His step was firm and his bearing was sufficiently confident as he approached her; but when she lifted her long lashes, disclosing a pair of large, limpid, hazel eyes, which regarded him, unabashed, with the transient curiosity one bestows upon a stranger, his face, I am sure, betrayed the humbug of the thing. The lady, however, not anticipating what followed, could scarcely have remarked it. Raising his hat as he reached the corner of the rock upon which she sat, he said, in a voice so curiously balanced between his enforced boldness and his reflected surprise thereat, that he hardly recognized it as his own: "How do you do, Miss Lawrence?" The lady looked at him wonderingly--steady, child-like eyes, that frankly and innocently perused his face, as if seeking for some trace of a forgotten acquaintance. Mr. Bartlett could not withdraw his, although he knew that his face was getting redder and his respiration more unsteady every moment. He stammered forth: "Miss Lawrence, of South Carolina, I believe." "You are mistaken, Sir," said the lady, with the least shade of coldness in her voice, but it fell upon Mr. Bartlett like the wind from an iceberg--"I am not Miss Lawrence." "I--I beg your pardon," he answered, somewhat confusedly. "You resemble her; I expected to meet her here. Will you please tell her I enquired for her? Here's my card!" Therewith he thrust both hands into his vest pockets, extracted a card from one of them, and laid it hastily upon the rock beside her. "Bertha! Bertha!" rang through the glen, above the roar of the waterfall. The remainder of the party which the young lady had preceded now came into view descending toward her. "Good-day, Miss Lawrence!" said Mr. Bartlett, again lifting his hat, and retracing his steps. For his life he could not have passed her and run the gauntlet of the faces of her friends upon the narrow path. Every soul of them would have instantly seen what a fool he was. Moreover, he had achieved enough for one day. The soldier who storms a perilous breach and finds himself alive on the inside of it could not be more astonished than he. "I blundered awfully," he thought; "but, after all, it's the one way to learn."--"Who's your friend, Bertha?" asked her brother, Dick Morris, the avant-guard of the party. "I never saw the fellow before." "If you had not frightened him by your sudden appearance," said she, "you might have discovered. A Southerner, I suppose, though he don't look like one. He addressed me as Miss Lawrence, of South Carolina, and afterwards left me his card, to be given to her. What shall I do with it?"