At length the exhibition closed with one grand tableau in many colored fire, displaying the family group of Brudenell, surmounted by their crest, arms, and supporters, all encircled by wreaths of flowers. This splendid transparency illumined the whole scene with dazzling light. It was welcomed by deafening huzzas from the crowd. When the noise had somewhat subsided, Reuben Gray, gazing with the sisters from their knoll upon all this glory, touched Nora upon the shoulder and said: "Look!" "I am looking," she said. "What do you see?" "The fireworks, of course." "And what beyond them?" "The great house--Brudenell Hall." "And there?" "The party on the upper piazza." "With Mr. Brudenell in the midst?" "Yes." "Now, then, observe! You see him, but it is across the glare of the fireworks! There is fire between you and him, girl--a gulf of fire! See that you do not dream either he or you can pass it! For either to do so would be to sink one, and that is yourself, in burning fire--in consuming shame! Oh, Nora, beware!" He had spoken thus! he, the poor unlettered man who had scarcely ever opened his mouth before without a grievous assault upon good English! he had breathed these words of eloquent warning, as if by direct inspiration, as though his lips, like those of the prophet of old, had been touched by the living coal from Heaven. His solemn words awed Hannah, who understood them by sympathy, and frightened Nora, who did not understand them at all. The last rays of the finale were dying out, and with their expiring light the party on the upper piazza were seen to bow to the rustic assembly on the lawn, and then to withdraw into the house. And thus ended the fete day of the young heir of Brudenell Hall. The guests began rapidly to disperse. Reuben Gray escorted the sisters home, talking with Hannah all the way, not upon the splendors of the festival--a topic he seemed willing to have forgotten, but upon crops, stock, wages, and the price of tea and sugar. This did not prevent Nora from dreaming on the interdicted subject; on the contrary, it left her all the more opportunity to do so, until they all three reached the door of the hill hut, where Reuben Gray bade them good-night. CHAPTER III. PASSION. If we are nature's, this is ours--this thorn Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong; It is the show and seal of nature's truth When love's strong passion is impressed in youth. --_Shakspere_. What a contrast! the interior of that poor hut to all the splendors they had left! The sisters both were tired, and quickly undressed and went to bed, but not at once to sleep. Hannah had the bad habit of laying awake at night, studying how to make the two ends of her income and her outlay meet at the close of the year, just as if loss of rest ever helped on the solution to that problem!