"Your cousin!" and the needles dropped from the old lady’s hands. "Bless me!" and adjusting her glasses a little more firmly upon her nose she peered curiously at him. "I want to know if you are one of them Bellengers? Wall, I guess you do favor Walter, if a body could see your face. It’s the fashion, I s’pose, to wear all that baird." "Yes, all the fashion," returned William, who was certainly good-natured, even if he possessed no other virtue, and having asked again the road to the woods, he set off in that direction. Following the path Aunt Debby pointed out, he soon came near enough to catch a view of the white dress Jessie wore, and wishing to see her first, himself unobserved, he crept cautiously to an opening among the pines, where he could see and hear all that was passing. Jessie’s sparkling, animated face was turned toward him, but he scarcely heeded it in his surprise at another view which greeted his vision. A slender, willowy form was more in accordance with Will’s taste than a fat chubby one, and in Ellen Howland his idea of a beautiful woman was, if possible, more than realized. She was leaning against a tree, her blue gingham morning gown,—for she was an invalid,—wrapped gracefully about her her golden hair, slightly tinged with red, combed back from her forehead, her long eyelashes veiling her eyes of blue, and shading her colorless cheek, while her lily-white hands were folded together, and rested upon her lap. "Jupiter!" thought William, "I did not suppose Deerwood capable of producing anything like that. Why, she’s the realization of what I’ve often fancied my wife should be. Now, if she were only rich I’d yield the black-eyed witch of a Jessie to my milksop cousin. But, pshaw! it shan’t be said of me that I fell in love at first sight with a vulgar country girl. What the deuce, they talk of Walter, do they! I’ll try eavesdropping a little longer," and bending his head, he listened while their conversation proceeded. He heard what Ellen said of Walter; he saw the startled look upon the face of Jessie as she exclaimed, "Does he hate me now?" and in that look he read what Jessie did not know herself. "The wretch!" he muttered, between his teeth; "why couldn’t he take the other one? I would, if the million were on her side," and in the glance he cast on Ellen there was more than a mere passing fancy. She must have felt its influence, for as that look fell upon her she said: "It’s cold,—I shiver as with a chill. Let’s go back to the house," and she arose to her feet, just as the pine boughs parted asunder, and William appeared before them. "Mr. Bellenger!" Jessie exclaimed. "When did you come?" "Half an hour since," he returned, "and not finding you in the house I came this way, little thinking I should stumble upon two wood nymphs instead of one," and again the peculiar glance rested upon Ellen, who had sunk back upon her seat, and whose soft eyes fell beneath his gaze.